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But immigrants aren't that large relative to the whole black population.
My point was specifically about NoVA and transplant-heavy parts of MD, like the DC suburbs and, to a smaller extent, the Baltimore suburbs. Immigrants (and their children) have played a very significant role in the dilution of "Southerness" in these areas.
What happened to all of those southern whites that went up North in the 1940s?
I am a descendent of a Southern white family that moved north in the 1930s. I am now back in the South....a great many of the children and grandchildren of these people returned to Dixie. Of those in my family descended from these original Northern immigrants, only a few remain in the North. I guess it was never meant to be.
It was intimated by others, but this is the simplest way to put it:
The U.S. has had historically a number of unique, regional cultures. The most distinctive of those, at least in terms of accent included the South, along with many of the major urban centers in the North, like NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. As the 20th century has wore on, the U.S. has also developed a "generic American" culture, which is cosmopolitan and which someone is increasingly likely to conform to as they move up the socio-economic ladder.
Hence, the north isn't getting less "Northern." But individual Northern cities are getting less distinctive in time. They are losing their cultural heritage just as the South is. It's just the culture that it is being replaced with doesn't seem quite as different.
It was intimated by others, but this is the simplest way to put it:
The U.S. has had historically a number of unique, regional cultures. The most distinctive of those, at least in terms of accent included the South, along with many of the major urban centers in the North, like NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. As the 20th century has wore on, the U.S. has also developed a "generic American" culture, which is cosmopolitan and which someone is increasingly likely to conform to as they move up the socio-economic ladder.
Hence, the north isn't getting less "Northern." But individual Northern cities are getting less distinctive in time. They are losing their cultural heritage just as the South is. It's just the culture that it is being replaced with doesn't seem quite as different.
I would contend that the urban South is becoming more Northern while the rural North is becoming more Southern. I recall a surreal moment driving between Detroit and Chicago wherein I stopped at a gas station in a small town... it was clearly the go-to place for food in the vicinity because it was packed with people wearing cowboy hats, speaking with pseudo Southern accents and listening to a song called Leroy the Redneck Reindeer. It reminded me quite a lot of the small towns my relatives in Mississippi live in, but it was not the kind of place you expected to see 90 minutes outside of downtown Chicago.
How many 20-somethings these days do you hear with thick regional accents? None I've ever heard, honestly.
It seems like regional accents started dying out with the Baby Boomers, and have faded ever since. Even here in Minnesota, the only people who have the stereotypical accent (especially in the Twin Cities metro) are people over age 55 or so.
I work with a bunch of younger Millennials (kids born in the 90s) who are all Minnesota natives who can't even pronounce words the normal Minnesotan way. They all say "bahg" instead of "bayg" (bag), "ex-PAIR-ih-mint" instead of "ix-SPEAR-mint" (experiment), and "Cul-low-RAH-doe" instead of "Cahl-low-RAD-doe" (Colorado). The accent is slowly being eroded away due to influences from mass media and entertainment, as is the case all over the country.
I think most linguistics think the opposite, that regional accents are becoming stronger... just not all of them. The Northern Cities Vowel Shift, for example, is creating more distinct accents from St Louis to Buffalo via things like the bus/boss merger.
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