Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Definitely.
When foreigners think of the US (and I know because I've lived across the pond for a couple of years), they think of Southern accents, BBQ, football fanatics, Texas ranchers, the trio of blues/jazz/soul, whiskey, and a lot of Southern things.
NASCAR is a national sport. it has races and fans all over the country.
From reference.com:
In the United States, nearly one out of every three adults is a NASCAR fan. The largest NASCAR arena holds 190,000 spectators while the largest NFL stadiums feature a maximum occupancy of 60,000 to 80,000. In terms of television viewers, NASCAR falls just behind the NFL as the most-watched televised sporting event. With an estimated $3 billion per year in sponsorships, two times more than the NFL, NASCAR is also the most financially lucrative spectator sport in the United States
By the way I'm not saying the rest of the US is devoid of culture. The East Coast and New England has a rich history and many amazing foods and things come from there. The difference however is take NYC for example, the culture they created there that spread is distinctly Irish, Jewish, or Italian. The culture every other region has produced is not really American or something new, the South is different.
I believe reasons being is southern culture is old. If your parents moved to the south and you were raised there you are from the south, but you are not southern. I am southern, my family has lived in GA 400 years, and we have the gravesites to prove it.
Also the south lacked opportunity for people from there till only after WWII. The large plantation owners were the minority. Most white southerners and all black southerners were trapped in abject poverty and isolation for hundreds of years. When focusing on your career isn't a reality, focusing on your passions becomes all you have.
Another reason is northerners know there old world heritage or identify with a prominent European group. Except for the planter class and plantation owners most southern white were mutts, a mix before they even arrived here, and the mixing continued after. I myself am 8 different nationalities of European, and Native American and a little African American. I'm just an average white southern guy. I identify as a white American and nothing else. I have no culture or history before we arrived in this land we were just oppressed gypsy mutts in Europe. My black ancestors were African mutts and slaves in Africa and my native part lived where I currently live and am from. There is no "old world" to true southerners like me. Georgia is my homeland.
Blacks were stripped of there culture, and 100s of tribes with different cultures were forced to become one. It was nessary for the white southerner and critical to the African American especially to create a new all American culture to survive. The north and planter class on the other hand were not mutts or displaced or stripped of there culture and had opportunity so they didn't need to develop a strong American culture, instead watered down versions of there homeland was good enough.
White southerners developed a cutler which eventually made them acceptable and even cool to te rest of the country that hated and distrusted them and think about this. If African Americans had not created there own culture (different from southern white but still southern) would they even be free? If it weren't for the blues, rock, rap music, etc would whites have ever even gave them any rights or seen them as human? African Americans had no choice but develop a rich culture just to survive and have hope, and they did, they developed on that is similar in many ways to white southern culture but in fact even much richer and deeper than southern white culture which is 2nd place in America. Make no mistake though. All African American culture is a black thing, but also ALL African American culture is southern or has southern roots. The positive and the negative.
Last edited by BeerBellyBilly; 10-01-2016 at 01:25 PM..
Wait, why is Hip-Hop being attributed to "Southern Transplants"? Hip-hop was created in New York City in the 70s. Some of these people were third-generation New Yorkers. Many of its creators were of the West Indian descent, not Southern. The South has absolutely zero claim on hip-hop. We can't attribute all Af-Am culture to the south, just because that's where our ancestors were enslaved.
The South looks much smaller than the Northeast and Midwest combined from the graph, I'm puzzled how you're reading it differently. While the oldest data is from 1900, the data is where Californians were born; so someon who was born in 1870 and moved to California would be counted. For example, 1920 6% of Californians were born in the South, 30% in the North.
I was talking about the northeast numbers. Texas alone was close to the numbers in that graph as the northeast in the 1950s. Texas certainly has attracted the lions share of Californians moving out lately as well , 600,000 people moved from California to Texas in the decade up to 2013 and those numbers dont seem to be slowing down based on census numbers
California was always the top postwar destination for people looking for more jobs,more open space, warmer weather, and better life opportunities. California's population increased by 137 percent between 1960 and 2010 but thats really seen some dropping numbers over the last decade.
This was just 2010-21011 but I will say there are still alot of Texans still moving to California, California is still a tech magnet and the best weather but probably not the state most people could afford to start a new life like it was in postwar america.
Wait, why is Hip-Hop being attributed to "Southern Transplants"? Hip-hop was created in New York City in the 70s. Some of these people were third-generation New Yorkers. Many of its creators were of the West Indian descent, not Southern. The South has absolutely zero claim on hip-hop. We can't attribute all Af-Am culture to the south, just because that's where our ancestors were enslaved.
No one is saying that the South developed Hip Hop (lol this is how you easily offend NY'ers btw).
Hip Hop Music was created in NYC by Black Americans and Jamaicans who would often sample breaks from several genres including Southern Music, then thereafter Jamaican DJ's would clash with each other. NEW YORK Hip Hop CULTURE was created by Black Americans, Jamaicans, and Puerto Ricans.
One of the producers of the Netflix show "The Get Down" spoke on it himself.
Quote:
The show features protagonist Ezekiel “Books” Figueroa, portrayed by Justice Smith, integrating an interesting duality in a culture strongly tied to African American movements. “One of the main reasons we made the character… is because we wanted to play on that duality,” remarked project producer Nelson George, “New York culture of the 70’s and 80’s was very much a mix of southern black, Latino primarily in Puerto Rican and Jamaican—and those three elements played a huge part [in] the creation of what we call hip-hop.”
(Not to mention James Brown had a large influence on Hip Hop.)
For food and music. but I feel California and the northeast influenced food as much if not more than southern eating did. Pop music also doesn't have many roots in the American South.
Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, Johnny Cash, all Southerners, are considered the Father's of Rock and Roll. They were all influenced by black singers and musicians like Little Richard, Bo Didley. The South gave us Rock n roll, country, bluegrass, blues, cajun, jazz. If there were no blacks in the US, I doubt rock and roll would never have come about.
Wait, why is Hip-Hop being attributed to "Southern Transplants"? Hip-hop was created in New York City in the 70s. Some of these people were third-generation New Yorkers. Many of its creators were of the West Indian descent, not Southern. The South has absolutely zero claim on hip-hop. We can't attribute all Af-Am culture to the south, just because that's where our ancestors were enslaved.
Weather you want to admit it or not African American culture is a southern culture. A friend of mine from IL made a comment to me one time about how he thinks "all white people down here talk like black people." I had a black girlfriend from Nebraska and when I took her to my grandparents house she thought we were putting on for her when we ate hot sauce greens and cornbread the first night and smothered chicken cornbread an okra the next day after a breakfast of shrimp grits. Than we took her to a family reunion BBQ. Being from Nebraska she assumed these things amongst also some slang terms and general behavior when southern white folks are around each other were "black things" most of them are not. They are southern things and it even goes to speech too. "Wallerin" "lolligagin" and "trifling" are not black words, they are southern words. Y'all say "finna" we say "fixin". I myself have been mistaking for a black man over the phone many times when I leave the Deep South so much so I have a fake "white accent" I use when I'm outside the region.
I'm not saying it's not it's own unique culture southern white culture and African American culture are very different in some ways but southern whites and African Americans regardless where those AAs live share much more in common with each other culturally than they do with any other groups on the planet. For instance soul food only started being called that after the great migration cause 95 percent of soul food is just southern food. The steriotype that whites don't season there food much or don't put hot sauce on everything or eat greens or chitlins is really only true for whites who are not southern. White southerners ALWAYS surprise northern transplants who are ignorant of true southern culture when they encounter it for the first time.
I know this is hard and even painful for some people to admit given the horrible sad history behind much of it, but it's simply the truth, and it is a reality.
As for Hip Hop name some all nice great MCs out of NYC that are not African Americans whose parents or grandparents were not from the south, if not they themselves. Other than biggie who was Jamaican and busts rhymes it's very slim pickings. West Indians, Puerto Ricans, and maybe even one white guy may have been there but hip hop is as African American as the blues.
Last edited by BeerBellyBilly; 10-01-2016 at 03:11 PM..
The only reason some of those art forms were made up north was it was the first time those people had the opportunity to actually record the music they had been singing and playing for years. Same with country music being "invented" in Nashville. Hillbillies had been making country music for many decades but lived isolated in abject poverty and Nashville was the closest place that had recording studios and enough people to market and sell the music.
A lot of folks don't know that country music was actually first recorded and commercialized in Atlanta, not Nashville. Nashville took the baton later on and ran with it.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
