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In most areas, thick regional accents are limited to working class whites. The South is the only area where regional accents are common among people of color and affluent whites.
We played the "where am I from" accent game with a group of people yesterday. Every single person got every single accent wrong (most were Southerners), except the guy from NYC. We all pegged him being from NYC. Hard to mask that accent.
For the record, I grew up in the Atlanta suburbs and have lived in Savannah for 9 years. Most people think I'm from the Midwest, specifically Chicago, by the way I sound.
For years I had a job where I dealt daily via phone with people in LA and NYC. Almost on a daily basis some idiot would ask me how come I was in Atlanta and didn't have an accent. It might have been innocent, but to us Southerners who grew up gritting our teeth and rolling our eyes at over-the-top Hollywood stereotypes it's an offensive question. You'd never EVER causally ask someone from NYC, Boston, Chicago or Texas "how come you don't have an accent?!" It's a backhanded way of asking "Why don't you sound stupid?"
Growing up in the South Atlanta suburbs (Forest Park/Lake City/Morrow) EVERYBODY had a southern accent (upcountry South, not the coastal Savannah/ Charleston mimicked in Hollywood movies) Even the Asian immigrants (mostly Vietnamese and Koreans) ,who learned their English in northeast Clayton County, sounded like the rest of us. We always joked about it. One of my classmates from Forest Park High was Hines Ward (who is Amer-Asian) and used to play for the Pittsburg Steelers, definitely sounds like a "Forest Park boy". My three children, from the same general area, also DEFINITELY have noticeable accents of the same variety.
There are different kinds of southern accents. Most people from the south have a southern accent, which is a slightly deeper voice, and an extended drawl on vowels. Then you have idiots like Paula Dean who are clearly talking like Fog Horn Leghorn, female style. Dean is trying to sound like a quaint 1940's "debutante" from the south, but she sounds like a Hollywood stereotype. Everyone has a slight accent of some kind. Some people will have a thick, sometimes exaggerated southern accent, while some will have slight accent. Most people fall somewhere in between. There will be variations in between.
Im from Columbia, SC, and my parents are from South Carolina, their parents are from South Carolina and their parents are from South Carolina. People outside the South have been surprised that I was from South Carolina. Do people actually think the South is like it is in movies where everyone has an accent?
Unfortunately, yes. But I don't agree with it. The perception is that the Deep South is "KKK" country with thick southern accents, lynching of interracial couples, segregated restaurants, motels, etc. It's often assumed everyone there is like George Wallace.
I am from rural Arizona but worked in the South for over ten years. I lived in the FL panhandle near Georgia and Alabama. So I worked with southerners and befriended many of them. The FL Panhandle does not really have a prevailing southern accent for people from the region. I only noticed the southern accent for people from Mississippi and Alabama. Many people from Louisiana actually have a French or Cajun accent. Another state where the southern accent is heightened in my experience was North Carolina - but even that can vary.
As for "white southerners" I learned that many actually have distant Native American ancestry. I was born on a rural Native American reservation in Arizona. I moved to North FL for an engineering job in 2002. It was a harsh time after 911 for engineering jobs out west, so FL was the only place I could find work. I was not enthusiastic at the time. I was concerned about harsh southern white racism: KKK, constant overuse of the "n" word, lynching of interracial couples, etc. Boy was I wrong. The modern south is actually very progressive and liberal. My engineering group actually had mostly foreign IT workers from South Asia. Many of them were Muslim. I was a brown Native American. The manager was a blonde white southern woman from Alabama. The configuration control engineer was a blonde white woman in appearance but actually 1/8 Seminole Indian.
The Carolinas have a prevailing gene pool of tribes that had once been in the area. Their mixed-blooded mostly white descendants are still there. So I learned the white southerners had actually intermixed with Native Americans many times. It's still like that. I had a blonde southern white girlfriend when I was there. She taught me to appreciate Chick-fil-a (lol). I had never gone there before. When I first arrived in 2002 I had thought it was a southern eatery catering to racist white people. I was definitively wrong.
So the southern accent varies in my experience. A lot of people there have the standard American accent.
In most areas, thick regional accents are limited to working class whites. The South is the only area where regional accents are common among people of color and affluent whites.
I can tell you that in the Upper Midwest, accents are not limited to anybody. Everybody sounds annoying and nasal no matter the socioeconomic status. Know why? Because our accents aren't stigmatized.
There are different kinds of southern accents. Most people from the south have a southern accent, which is a slightly deeper voice, and an extended drawl on vowels. Then you have idiots like Paula Dean who are clearly talking like Fog Horn Leghorn, female style. Dean is trying to sound like a quaint 1940's "debutante" from the south, but she sounds like a Hollywood stereotype. Everyone has a slight accent of some kind. Some people will have a thick, sometimes exaggerated southern accent, while some will have slight accent. Most people fall somewhere in between. There will be variations in between.
There used to be some show about a pageant that took place in Duluth. I don't remember what it was called, my mom was watching it one time. Anyway, despite taking place in an area of Gwinnett that is very diverse with many transplants, each family there and the "coach" or whatever had these ridiculous over the top accents. I frequent rural NE Georgia and I can't remember the last time I've actually heard people talk with such exaggerated accents, much less suburban Gwinnett County.
I've been asked quite frequently from other students in PA why I don't have an accent. Even when they know I'm from Atlanta .
The Atlanta accent is pretty much standard American. So many people live there that the accents just mesh.
Now Blacks in Atlanta sound very Southern, however. Whites have a very weak to non existent Southern accent though, if any. Georgia accents tend to not exist in cities.
Heck what I find about the South is the opposite of the North. Most cities have weak to no accent and in the North, the distinctive accents tend to be in cities. Compare Atlanta or Charlotte to their respective states vs. Cincinnati/Cleveland to their home state or Chicago to its home state. Same in Boston. Most people in Massachusetts outside of Boston don't talk like that.
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