Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama... (living in, moving, nightlife)

[Spade]

Is the entirety of Texas Southern? No. Is the majority, yeah. But that alone makes Texas different than the rest of the Gulf Coast states. Brownsville is on the gulf but you won't get any type of similar atmosphere here like you will in upper Texas gulf coast, Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama. I won't even mention the rest of the rio grande valley.

[Phil75230]

Speaking as someone who grew up half way between Dallas and Atlanta (well, close enough). I also lived in Memphis for 3 1/2 years.


@Alabama - Birmingham is about 650 from Dallas, about 150 from Atlanta. No prizes for guessing where Alabama in general leans. As for culture, altitude and landscape gives a big clue. N. AL is part of the Appalachians, and hence has a lot more in common with E. TN than even with S. and C. AL. The Old Plantation belt is in Central AL (esp the "Black Belt"), and in Mobile.

@Mississippi - Jackson is right at the halfway point between the two cities - about 400 miles from each. There is some interaction between both Texas and Georgia, but my impression is that Jackson leans slightly more toward Atlanta. Areas further east even more so. This is probably because it's within in the Atlanta region of a lot of federal offices (although it shares the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals with TX, but the 5th Circuit is seated in New Orleans, not Texas). The most Plantation-oriented area was along the Mississippi River, with a little bit in E. Miss, around Columbus. I would say the only parts of the state that can't be called "Old South" would be the Gulf Coast and NE Mississippi.

@Louisiana - Three Regions: New Orleans, South Louisiana, and North Louisiana. NOLA is in a category by itself. South Louisiana is the Cajun area, especially SW LA and areas SW of NOLA. However, the area N. of NOLA and E. of Baton Rouge, which is in many cases better treated as more North La than Cajun country. Which brings us to North La., this area is in almost every way imaginable indistinguishable from Mississippi. Same type of landscape, same culture, very similar demographics -- practically everything. All these areas lean more toward Texas than to Atlanta. N. La leans more toward Dallas, S. and C. La lean more toward Houston.

@ Texas - as others said, it's simply too big to define succinctly. Part of it is in the South, part of it is in the West, and part of it is in the Border area. The actual "Southern" area is only the eastern-most 100 miles of the state (east of a Tyler to Houston line). The rest of the state (barring the major cities) is cultural and religiously conservative, and it probably was inherited from Deep South settlers, and it shows in its politics. Despite this, there is still a quality about the area that makes it unlike Mississippi and Alabama; just like Nebraska and Kansas are not really like Indiana and Ohio.

However, despite being a Confederate state, most of the state never really had a lot of slavery outside the East Texas, and perhaps a few places along the "Coastal Bend". Slavery had just barely gotten off the ground in Dallas for sure (and maybe the Austin area too) by the time the Civil War started (only about 10% of Dallas County had slaves by the time of Abolition).

As for the areas west, I won't comment beyond saying this area is more Western than Southern. West from Tyler, the "Southernness" decreases - mostly petering out at I-35. West of 35 is the West.

[soletaire]

East Texas to around a Commerce,Tx, Athens,Tx, Buffalo, Navasota Line is fully and undeniably southern and areas around Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Woodville down to Conroe are really more Deep South than anything.. Then a kind of hybridized urban/upper south/western thing starts to happen around DFW in North Texas and Austin in Central Texas..After this region, heading west, a light southernness in Texas is still there in pockets, but things are much different from the southeast, or even east texas...

I would also agree with others who say there actually is more interaction between Mississippi and Texas than first meets the eye...at least in Southeast Texas. North Texas has a mild but pretty similar affiliation with North Louisiana also.


While i would characterize Mississippi as just "the south" in all forms, alabama and points east are actually noticeably more Southeastern in character...as in: an eastern version of the Deep South that is distinguishable from Mississippi's version of the Deep South

[Mwahfromtheheart]

Originally Posted by philopower

Texas is far more important than any state in the south.

More important than the state that drains the most important waterway on our continent?

[TexasReb]

=Phil75230;39067425]Speaking as someone who grew up half way between Dallas and Atlanta (well, close enough). I also lived in Memphis for 3 1/2 years.
<snip>
As for the areas west, I won't comment beyond saying this area is more Western than Southern. West from Tyler, the "Southernness" decreases - mostly petering out at I-35. West of 35 is the West.

The thing is, in Texas (except for the trans-pecos "horn"), Southern and Western are not mutually exclusive of one another. Any more than Midwest and West in Kansas, or Southern and Eastern are in North Carolina or Tennessee.

Related to the above is that the I-35 "border" in Texas between the South and Southwest/West is sorta like the "Mason-Dixon Line" between North and South. It has been so overused as to have become almost accepted by default. When in fact, as Glen Sample Ely in an interview concerning his book "Where the West Begins: Debating Texas Identity" put it:

Since the 1980s, there's been a needed correction, reintegrating our Southern legacy into the state's narrative...East Texas and the South do not abruptly end in Dallas... Dallas is only 30 miles from Fort Worth...in branding itself Western, the city was simply doing what much of Texas did during the '20s and '30s, escaping out West to avoid its Southern heritage, the legacy of defeat in the Civil War, military occupation during Reconstruction...and it's no secret that the Old West and Western destinations remain very popular with tourists...For the record, the Lone Star State is Western, Southern and much more. This is precisely what makes us so unique.

Also, the term "Southwest" when referring to Texas denotes something quite different in history, culture, traditions, etc, than in states like New Mexico and Arizona which are also labeled "Southwest." As the term applies to areas west of Ft. Worth within the Lone Star State (with the trans-pecos again being an exception), the term Southwest is, culturally speaking, the "western South" (this is the label used in Raymond Gastil's classic work "Cultural Regions of the United States"). Basically it refers to being essentially Southern, yet very much blended with traits of the "frontier west."

On the other hand, when speaking of New Mexico and Arizona, it would be flipped to be southern West. They are two different critters.

Texas has little in common with the true West (i.e. Mountain States, interior SW, or Pacific Coast). Those states did not influence Texas at all, whereas settlers from the southeastern states decidedly did. Naturally they had to adapt to a new physical environment in making a living and such, but that didn't mean they discarded their history, culture, attitudes, religion, speech, etc...so that still today even most of west Texas (although certainly completely the opposite of what is generally thought of as "Southern" in terms of the landscape), retains those characteristics. For instance, the overwhelming predominance of the Southern Baptist Church, and the speech patterns and accent which are very linguistically akin to that spoken in, say, eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama...where a goodly percentage of those settlers came from.

Oh well, I have rambled enough in one post, I think! LOL

[motownewave]

Do Louisianans have any hatred of Texas, or the other way around? There's a distinct group of people called "Yats" in New Orleans that tend to be a good bit more educated than the garden variety Southerner, and perhaps are jealous of Texas and its cities being a much bigger destination for international business than New Orleans, despite Texas cities having no equivalent to Yats (except for those Yats that moved there...)

[Mwahfromtheheart]

Originally Posted by motownewave

Do Louisianans have any hatred of Texas, or the other way around? There's a distinct group of people called "Yats" in New Orleans that tend to be a good bit more educated than the garden variety Southerner, and perhaps are jealous of Texas and its cities being a much bigger destination for international business than New Orleans, despite Texas cities having no equivalent to Yats (except for those Yats that moved there...)

I don't. Texas may have more people visiting it and have whatever it wants going on for it. I was born in SA, much of my dads side of the family lives in TX and I have seen all it has to offer, but was raised in Louisiana my entire life and I prefer New Orleans and South Louisiana because that's where my roots are (was raised by my cajun mom). Louisiana still has its special qualities (food, music, people) that we enjoy and we miss it if we leave. NOLA will party regardless if anybody comes. If the entire rest of the world stopped going to Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, they'd still exist and the people here would still go. And would still be havin a crazy time!

We party because its fun... not to impress. Couldn't care less what TX does

[motownewave]

Originally Posted by Mwahfromtheheart

I don't. Texas may have more people visiting it and have whatever it wants going on for it. I was born in SA, much of my dads side of the family lives in TX and I have seen all it has to offer, but was raised in Louisiana my entire life and I prefer New Orleans and South Louisiana because that's where my roots are (was raised by my cajun mom). Louisiana still has its special qualities (food, music, people) that we enjoy and we miss it if we leave. NOLA will party regardless if anybody comes. If the entire rest of the world stopped going to Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, they'd still exist and the people here would still go. And would still be havin a crazy time!

We party because its fun... not to impress. Couldn't care less what TX does

But I'm talking about business, not nightlife, leisure, etc. Are educated Louisianans (which I know sounds like an oxymoron to Yankees but isn't) angry that Texas with its narrow-minded cowboy simpletons attracts way more jobs, industry, etc than Louisiana? (I know Texas is a way bigger state, but couldn't New Orleans be the size of Houston if Northerners didn't picture New Orleans as a place full of Tennessee Williams-esque square Southerners?)

[Mwahfromtheheart]

Originally Posted by motownewave

But I'm talking about business, not nightlife, leisure, etc. Are educated Louisianans (which I know sounds like an oxymoron to Yankees but isn't) angry that Texas with its narrow-minded cowboy simpletons attracts way more jobs, industry, etc than Louisiana? (I know Texas is a way bigger state, but couldn't New Orleans be the size of Houston if Northerners didn't picture New Orleans as a place full of either Tennessee Williams-esque square Southerners?)

I don't know. I don't really think we care about that very much. Some do, and they leave but many end up coming back, believe it or not. Louisiana residents aren't really here because of jobs, a lot are here because they have family and love them dearly and don't wanna leave. I think Louisianians define success in life a little bit differently than what kind of career you have.

I'll point out that Louisiana isn't a slouch economically either. It handles 1/3rd of the nations oil and has a tourism industry that catered nearly 30 million visitors last year. We handle a lot of the nations agricultural products and have 2 world class ports, and even a NASA facility. Also, films are being shot here constantly and a lot of CA residents are buying part time properties here to work on filming. Why be jealous?

EDIT: TLDR Louisiana doesn't do business, it hustles. Residents don't mind that because we enjoy other things besides money.

[motownewave]

Anyway, why did New Orleans not grow up with the same Puritanical beliefs of most other Southern communities? The other two most "wild" cities in America (Las Vegas and San Francisco) perhaps are that way due to being in the Wild West, but New Orleans went from being a Bible Belt capital to a sin city.