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I'm not sure which city is more southern. But Atlanta doesn't have a lot of southerners. Most southerners in Atlanta come from Florida or Tennessee. And there is enough transplants from the West Coast and North East where it's more than noticeable. Atlanta has over 5 million people, a good amount of them are nit from the south.
Southern politics influence Atlanta. A lot of state level decisions directly impact Atlanta. But from a cultural perspective, there isn't am overwhelming amount of southern characteristic in Atlanta to call it a southern city. Geographically it's southern though.
In terms of how southern it is compared to DC, neither city is very southern culturally. DC people are obnoxiously rude, but they're rudeness even like NY rudeness. Atlanta was ranked 7th most rudest city last year as well. So there is definitely an element of rudeness in both cities.
"Most southerners in Atlanta come from Florida or Tennessee"?
We're not talking about the southerners that you know. There are roughly 2.5 million native metro Atlantans. Are there more than that number of Floridians and Tennesseans in metro Atlanta? On top of that number, there are an appreciable number of other native Georgians from other parts of the state. This doesn't take into account the number of native southerners from other states. Hence, the area as a whole is southern.
You're not going to find a lot of stereotypical southern characteristics, considering that many of the natives don't have them. This is the same in some other places where living in an urbanized area with other groups has a diluted effect. That said, there is still plenty of it here if you're willing to look. The word "y'all" is used a lot. Secondly, people still drink sweet tea, and they like barbecue. College football is wildly popular like it is in much of the rest of the South.
So, while I agree that some parts of the metro area aren't very southern culturally, it doesn't represent but about one-quarter of the entire region, if that.
Georgetown was a fairly important port in the 18th century. It wasn't a major center, but it was there. DC's population was Top 10 in 1820.
I guess you missed the part about a virtual lockstep history, huh? It's not only that these cities were port cities (for the ummpteenth time). They developed pretty much the same way from their founding to the present day.
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Originally Posted by pgm123
DC had a lot of Irish refugees in the mid-19th Century. Irish Catholics did not settle much in the South, but they did go to DC. The main neighborhood was Swampdoodle, which was destroyed to make room for Union Station in 1907. The other big neighborhood was Georgetown (with spillover into Foggy Bottom). They were primarily employed constructing the C&O Canal (which linked DC economically with the Great Lakes like many other Northern cities).
If you're going to try to point out exceptions (and I see you're one of the "exceptionalists" here on C-D), you should at least be accurate. There was indeed considerable Irish immigration to the South during the mid 19th centurty with a sizable population in Charleston. In fact, I would argue that Charleston has a much stronger Irish identity than anywhere in the DC region.
But the major difference in Irish immigration patterns between the North and South is that the former experienced a large, second wave of Irish immigrants who became the backbone of heavy industry in the Northeast. The South did not have much of that at all (with the exception of Birmingham, AL possibly). DC did not have that at all. Baltimore, on the other hand, had much more of it, which makes it demographically and culturally more similar to the Northeast.
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Originally Posted by pgm123
These neighborhoods did lose their Irish character largely because DC is a transient city. No one stays too long. But the fact remains that Irish Catholics came to DC and they didn't go South.
Again, I just proved that wrong. The St. Patty's Day parade in Charleston is way better than that sterile garbage they have in DC.
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Originally Posted by pgm123
Germans also moved into Georgetown and Foggy Bottom and set up shops in the current Penn Quarter.
Yeah, we tend to think of German Americans as simply "standard white." Germans (or shall I say people of some German ancestry) comprise the bulk of white Americans across the vast majority of states. That's not a distinguishing characteristic of the Northeast. Sorry. Try again.
You're still missing an important point. It's a constellation of characteristics that make a city northeastern, not just one or two. Baltimore is quasi-northeastern because it shares the industrial history of the Northeast and also developed as a city alongside New York and Philly. But it's also culturally distinct because it is a bit different demographically from the Northeast (and it's the people that drive the culture after all). Baltimore straddles the North-South divide unlike any other city because it truly shares historical and present-day characteristics of both the North and South. DC, on the other hand, was a truly southern town up until the 1970s. I mean, the events in the movie "Remember the Titans" (featuring Alexandria's own T.C. Williams High School) did not take place 100 years ago. It was the early 1970s.
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Originally Posted by pgm123
You can also use this to find ethnicities: Measuring the U.S. Melting Pot - Interactive Heritage Map - Bloomberg You can compare ethnicities (say Irish vs. English or German vs. English). High numbers of Italians is really a Boston to Philadelphia thing. Irish goes down to DC. Germans to NoVa.
That's not true. Eastern Pennsylvania has a lot of Italian influence, particularly in towns like Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. And Pittsburgh has, I believe, the fifth largest Italian population after NYC, Philly, Chicago and Boston. Syracuse is another city that has a significant Italian population. Even Rochester has a fair degree of Italian influence that's completely lacking in the DC Metro area. Much of the Northeast is dotted with these little industrial towns with ethnic populations that you simply don't find in Maryland or Virginia.
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Originally Posted by pgm123
Broadly, DC's population boom really coincided with the Civil War. It was top 15 in 1900 and kept climbing (jumping ahead of San Francisco during WWII). The population plummeted after the race riots, but that doesn't discount what was before.
The region's population boom really coincided with the massive expansion of the federal government following the Second World War.
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Originally Posted by pgm123
Several points on slavery.
1) Delaware had slavery.
2) New Jersey had slavery until 1846, but had indentured servants for life for some Blacks. Slavery didn't truly end in New Jersey until 1865. New Jersey was the 32nd state to ratify the 13th amendment (ahead of Texas and Delaware, but behind Georgia).
3) Philadelphia was a very free city, but New York was not. There were lots of slavecatchers (Blackbirders) who had business ties to the South. The Evening Post reported in 1860, "The City of New York belongs almost as much to the South as to the North." New York also had some of the most violent protests against the war and the draft of any state in the Union (possibly only topped by Baltimore).
If you want to be extra-technical about it, all of the original 13 colonies had slavery. The difference is that slavery was not an integral part of the industrial-based economy in the Northeastern states so the slave populations never got that large. By 1860, Massachusetts had zero slaves, New York had zero slaves, Pennsylvania had zero slaves, and New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut all had zero slaves. The slave population in any Northern state never grew larger than 21,000 (New York) and that was back in 1790. By 1830, that number was 75. Maryland, in contrast, had 87,189 slaves at the eve of the Civil War and thought the institution was so fabulous that it didn't get around to abolishing slavery until after the War.
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Originally Posted by pgm123
Jim Crow reigned supreme because DC can't control its own laws. It was implemented by President Woodrow Wilson, so it happened much later than the Black Codes of the South. Offices were desegregated under Truman, so it ended sooner as well.
Jim Crow also reigned supreme in Northern Virginia, hence my reference to Remember the Titans (love that movie, btw).
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Originally Posted by pgm123
Anyway, most of those things that apply to Baltimore apply to DC. They're basically in the same state.
Most people would say that there's a world of difference between Baltimore and DC. They're culturally very different places.
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Originally Posted by pgm123
Yep. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are definitely primarily English. Ethnic diversity is a Bos-Wash thing, not a Northern thing (speaking strictly of the East Coast).
That's clearly not true as cities like Pittsburgh, Rochester and Buffalo are not "East Coast" in the slightest sense.
I don't think that something has to be universally true across the board for a general proposition to be valid as there's a great deal of heterogeneity in both the North and South. Baton Rouge is very different from Richmond. Slavery was a defining charactersitic of southern states, which is why the South has a lot of black people, but slavery was hardly present in many parts of the South, which explains why the black populations there aren't very large. The South was largely lacking in industry, but Birmingham was a noticeable exception, whose steel industry rivaled Pittsburgh's at one point in time. If you travel across the entire southeastern region or the entire northeastern region, they are not going to be 100 percent identical from top to bottom (culturally, economically, lingustically or demographically).
People tend to associate the Northeast with the major cities because that's where the bulk of the population has been for the most part. New York City alone has 8.4 million of the state's 18 million residents. Then its Metro area eats up another decent chunk of the state. Boston and Providence eat up large chunks of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. NYC eats up large chunks of Connecticut and a great deal of Connecticut is NYC-influenced.
States like New Hampshire and Vermont are tiny drops in the bucket compared to the overall population of the NE (and parts of NH are strongly influenced by Boston anyway).
Last edited by BajanYankee; 02-20-2013 at 08:27 AM..
The Bay Area is also largely Democratic. Does that remind you of New Jersey, too?
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Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly
uses terms like soda instead of coke like the rest of the South
I'm pretty sure people call soda "soda" in the South. Pepsi Cola was invented in North Carolina after all. I have never heard anyone refer to any form of soda as "coke," but that's just me.
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Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly
Mid-Atlantic dialect
In Baltimore, perhaps. In Northern Virginia, Montgomery and P.G., not so much.
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Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly
similar weather
Okay.
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Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly
lots of rowhouses in the inner ring suburbs
DC does not have "lots of rowhouses in the inner ring suburbs." Alexandria has some rowhouses that are confined to Old Town and that's it. That just goes to show that you're really not familiar with the area.
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Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly
great mass transit
You think Philadelphia has "great mass transit?" I don't see this as a northern, southern or western thing anyway. Chicago has: (1) a "Democrat base"; (2) rowhouses and (3) great mass transit, but I don't find it to be anything like home.
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Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly
I'm not saying that there is no longer has southern influence but I will say that Northern Virginia today leans more culturally to the Northern states than it does the Southern states.
You guys are intent on refuting arguments that were never made. The claim was made that Northern Virginia is in fact northeastern or northern. That's completely ridiculous.
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Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly
These people were born and raised in Northern Virginia. Do their accent really sound that southern to you? If you ask me they sound more northern than southern.
That's beside the point since I never argued that Northern Virginia was southern. I argued that Northern Virginia is not northern.
But to entertain the question, no, they do not sound southern. But neither do Julia Roberts or Ryan Seacrest who are native Atlantans. The southern accent is going the way of the glacier as people attain more education.
Yeah, I've been through those cities on I-95 and I've seen the transition 1st hand. I've been through both the Inner-city(not necesarilly the hood per se, but downtown and adjecent neighborhoods, well, it might've been the hood, it looked "hoodish" but vibrant) in B'more and the B'more burbs. And I must say the B'more burbs looked just like burbs you'd find in the Southern Piedmont(NC, GA, etc).
But you start to see more Wawa's once you get to Deleware. Dover DE looked like a country town in the NC and VA, and then there was a random housing project we went to to with my cousin to see fire-works(In Dover).
Wilmington DE looked like a NE city to me. DC felt like a mix of NE and the South. Southern-ish, or Southern-lite Blacks in a super walk-able, super urban, older, setting. Then there were other DC Blacks who spoke and reminded me of NY'ers, Philidelphians etc. Philly felt like a bigger version of B'more to me. DC felt diffirent from both B'more and Philly.
DC felt more White Collar, Yuppie, Hipster, Newer urban developement, mixed-with Hood Blacks, and White Collar, Yuppie, Hipster Blacks. I didn't see any of those sort of Blacks in Philly or B'more(well, maybe in the B'more burbs). But when I was in Philly I was primarily in the Germantown area. But it felt like DC did a better job at preserving it's history and vibrancy, and preserving it's older buildings, apartments, house etc, while maintaing walk-ability all the while feeling cleaner and building cleaner, newer, developemnt in older districts. Overall DC felt clean, new, and preserved at the same time. Philly and B'more felt vibrant, and preserved, but grimier and and dirtier and older. We even drove through Southeast DC, in the Anacostia neighborhood around midnight(it drove through there by accident because we were lost). Even the hood in DC didn't "look" too bad. I've seen worse in Miami. We stoped and asked for directions(brave, I know) and they were curtious. I'm sure Anacostia was a war-zone in the 90's though.
If you're going to try to point out exceptions (and I see you're one of the "exceptionalists" here on C-D), you should at least be accurate. There was indeed considerable Irish immigration to the South during the mid 19th centurty with a sizable population in Charleston. In fact, I would argue that Charleston has a much stronger Irish identity than anywhere in the DC region.
But the major difference in Irish immigration patterns between the North and South is that the former experienced a large, second wave of Irish immigrants who became the backbone of heavy industry in the Northeast. The South did not have much of that at all (with the exception of Birmingham, AL possibly). DC did not have that at all. Baltimore, on the other hand, had much more of it, which makes it demographically and culturally more similar to the Northeast.
(I'm not sure what an exceptionalist is. You might need to go into that).
Those two links contradict each other, but I'll concede that it's likely Irish Catholics went to Charleston. However, if you look at the Irish immigration to DC from 1880, you'll see that DC blows away Chraleston. Here's 1870. Again, DC is no Philadelphia, but it's no Charleston either.
The major difference that I'll concede is that DC has never had much industry. That makes it unlike Baltimore, but unlike Birmingham as well.
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Originally Posted by BajanYankee
Yeah, we tend to think of German Americans as simply "standard white." Germans (or shall I say people of some German ancestry) comprise the bulk of white Americans across the vast majority of states. That's not a distinguishing characteristic of the Northeast. Sorry. Try again.
Do a German vs. English comparison. Do a German vs. Scottish comparison. Germans are everywhere, but the density is less in the South and the density of English, Scottish, and Scots-Irish is much higher.
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Originally Posted by BajanYankee
DC, on the other hand, was a truly southern town up until the 1970s. I mean, the events in the movie "Remember the Titans" (featuring Alexandria's own T.C. Williams High School) did not take place 100 years ago. It was the early 1970s.
1) What am I looking for with that DC in the '60s link? I played some of the videos on the bottom trying to hear Southern accents (and didn't). I listened to what they were saying, but these things were largely true in Philadelphia (block busting and the like).
2) I'm only talking about DC, not Alexandria. Most of DC's Maryland suburbs (on the east and south) are excluded as well. Arlington/Alexandria's Northernization is very recent.
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Originally Posted by BajanYankee
The region's population boom really coincided with the massive expansion of the federal government following the Second World War.
Washington's population grew 75% after the Civil War. It grew again in 1895 when it annexed Georgetown. It grew again during the Great Depression and again after WWII. It had periods of booms up until the '60s when people fled the city.
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Originally Posted by BajanYankee
If you want to be extra-technical about it, all of the original 13 colonies had slavery. The difference is that slavery was not an integral part of the industrial-based economy in the Northeastern states so the slave populations never got that large. By 1860, Massachusetts had zero slaves, New York had zero slaves, Pennsylvania had zero slaves, and New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut all had zero slaves. The slave population in any Northern state never grew larger than 21,000 (New York) and that was back in 1790. By 1830, that number was 75. Maryland, in contrast, had 87,189 slaves at the eve of the Civil War and thought the institution was so fabulous that it didn't get around to abolishing slavery until after the War.
You just ignored what I said. New Jersey had slaves right up to the Civil War--they just called it something else.
DC had slaves right up till the Civil War (when Lincoln ended it). But free Blacks outnumbered slaves 3.5 to One. Laws regarding Black people were incredibly lax if you judge it by Southern standards--certainly better than Baltimore.
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Originally Posted by BajanYankee
That's clearly not true as cities like Pittsburgh, Rochester and Buffalo are not "East Coast" in the slightest sense.
I kind of wrote that backwards. If we're talking about the East Coast, ethnic diversity is primarily a Bos-Wash thing.
The Bay Area is also largely Democratic. Does that remind you of New Jersey, too?
We are just talking about northern and Southern states. We are not talking about the Bay Area. The fact reminds that that northern states lean more democratic while southern states lean more republican. Northern Virginia is largely Democratic which is something it shares politically with the Northeast.
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I'm pretty sure people call soda "soda" in the South. Pepsi Cola was invented in North Carolina after all. I have never heard anyone refer to any form of soda as "coke," but that's just me.
The majority of the south call their soft drinks coke. Here is a good make that shows that. As you can see Northern Virginia falls under the soda area.
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DC does not have "lots of rowhouses in the inner ring suburbs." Alexandria has some rowhouses that are confined to Old Town and that's it. That just goes to show that you're really not familiar with the area.
It's still a decent amount even though it might not be on the level of Philly or New York. Don't act like rowhouses are not a northern characteristic. The overwhelming majority of Southern cities do not have rowhouses.
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You think Philadelphia has "great mass transit?"
You better believe it! There are only a couple of cities in the entire country that has better mass transit than Philly. There are not that many cities in the US that have commuter rail, light rail, subway, electric trolley buses, and bus rapid transit all in one city. Stop hating on Philly transit so much.
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I don't see this as a northern, southern or western thing anyway. Chicago has: (1) a "Democrat base"; (2) rowhouses and (3) great mass transit, but I don't find it to be anything like home.
It's still a trait especially when it comes to having a subway system. Every major city in the Bos-Wash corridor has a subway system contrary to the South which only has 2 cities with a subway system(Atlanta and Miami).
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But to entertain the question, no, they do not sound southern. But neither do Julia Roberts or Ryan Seacrest who are native Atlantans. The southern accent is going the way of the glacier as people attain more education.
So your saying people who have Southern accents tend to be less educated.
Last edited by gwillyfromphilly; 02-20-2013 at 11:48 AM..
Look, we're clearly not going to reach an agreement on this. Your point seems to be that DC was a Southern city and therefore can't be a Northern city now. My point is that DC was always a national city with elements from all over. However, since most of its population growth has been post-Civil War and most of that population growth was done by Northerners, it is much closer to a Northern city than a Southern city.
As for Baltimore, it was a Southern city, then a border city, but it's so much of a Northern city now that the only reason to even refer to it as a transition city is for historical reasons.
The southern accent is going the way of the glacier as people attain more education.
Unless you're taking classes that specifically deal with atering your speech, I'm not sure what level of education has to do with an accent.
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