The Midwest & south may tend to be a bit more racist but now Billy can laughed

[theking]

..at those doubters  :

Tae Bo creator Billy Blanks, 67, was once told he ‘wouldn’t appeal to white women’ as a Black man

The word "success" is an understatement for Blanks, 67, who created the Tae Bo workout (a combination of all his passions: martial arts, boxing and dance) while running a small karate studio in Quincy, Mass., in the late-1970s. At the time, he had no idea it would become a pop culture phenomenon.

...Blanks recalls a memorable business meeting in the 1990s in California, where Tae Bo was gaining immense popularity among women. Executives for “one of the biggest video companies in the world” told him he wouldn’t be able to “appeal to white women” in middle America because he was a Black man.

“They said, ‘Mr. Blanks, you know, we like the things that you talk about, but you being Black, we don't think you'll work in the Midwest.’ I said, ‘OK, that's it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it,’” he says, after which he and his manager walked out. “My manager, his mouth just [dropped]. He couldn’t believe it.”