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You said you disagreed with me and I asked for clarification in post #113 and you didn't respond.
Did post #159 provide clarity?
I'm asking because, it appears that even southerners believe that their cities aren't southern anymore. A Northeastern city wont become less northern if the people leaving were being replaced by southerners at a ratio of 1:1.
I'm asking because, it appears that even southerners believe that their cities aren't southern anymore. A Northeastern city wont become less northern if the people leaving were being replaced by southerners at a ratio of 1:1.
If you're curious as to why so many are saying they're not Southerners, A New Mind: What Does it Mean to be a "Southerner" is supposedly a good read. Below is an interview with the author and a snipbit of what she said.
HEADLEE: Before we go further with our discussion, though, let's kind of define what we're talking about here when we say the South. You say, and let me quote here, you say it's where there's sugar in the tea and not in the cornbread. But geographically speaking, what's in the South?
THOMPSON: Well, any definition of the South is going to be idiosyncratic because there's no - there isn't any good definition of the South. I started with the 11 states of the old Confederacy. So Maryland gets off the hook and so does Missouri and Kentucky. And then at that point I sort of started whittling it down and I used as a rough guideline my friend Joel Garreau's book "The Nine Nations of North America." I kind of lopped off everything but east Texas and I kind of stopped halfway down Florida because southern Florida is not Southern.
HEADLEE: The south of Orlando is no longer the South.
THOMPSON: Right. Right. And I excluded some of the close in suburbs in northern Virginia which...
Also, to me, this whole "if you're an immigrant, you're not southern" crap is just another way that native born (usually white) Americans get away with saying "if you're an immigrant, you're not REALLY American." BS. If you're an immigrant and you grow up in a certain region of this country, you have EVERY right to claim that regional AS WELL as national identity. Especially if you came as a child. You're still a part of that region. You don't live in a vacuum. And your life is still influenced by the geography, climate, culture, economics and politics of that region.
Who decides those rules anyway? The Kool Kids Klub?
Badger you're preaching gospel the last few pages. On here, and only on here, have I encountered so many Miamians distancing themselves from the South. I've never been to Miami so I'm definitely not saying those Miamians don't exist, but every Miami native I ever met did not remove themselves from the South, and my perception has also been scored by the many Miami celebrities who have no problem calling themselves southern...
The whole "Miami is so international so it isn't the South" never made any sense at all, and I agree with you, people who say that are subtly exposing their prejudices...
Quote:
Originally Posted by KodeBlue
I have yet to have someone explain to me how people migrating to the south from the north makes a place less southern, but the reverse isn't true in regards to places like NYC. Did NYC become more southern during the great migration?
People also won't admit, although that is obviously the case, that they have a strict definition of what the south can be. Any deviation from country and rural does not coincide with the sterotypical view of the south.
That's why you have so many people performing all types of mental acrobatics to justify how their city can't be southern because they have fancy sandwich shops, don't act southern.
Different rules apply to different places, apparently...
Quote:
Originally Posted by CookieSkoon
The reasons I have for not considering Maryland southern are as much, if not more, to do with its landscape, location, and general climate. The modern culture being more like the north is just an aside.
There are parts of the northeast and Midwest that culturally feel southernesque but are certainly not part of the south.
I don't totally disagree with you, but Maryland is historically southern. Maryland didn't pack its bags and move further north. The national perception of what is considered southern has changed, more than any other region, in the last 25-50 years. Maryland is still Maryland, so if it was only lightly southern to begin with, then it was. But there are Virginia parallels for every Maryland region, there are more Virginia parallels to Maryland than any other state, yet let's be very frank: the perception of Virginia as being "so much more southern" than Maryland is rooted in the Capital of the Confederacy propaganda, which has misrepresented parts of Virginia on a number of levels for a long time...
I've said this before, were Virginia never the capital if the CSA, the national perception on VA would be markedly different. As it is, people view both states through an irrational lens for neighboring states that share centuries of history and culture that is clearly, obviously, undeniably, still in play today. They don't belong to different regions, and this agenda to separate them is asinine. Sure, by virtue of location, Maryland has a stronger northern inclination. That's about it, though...
I'm asking because, it appears that even southerners believe that their cities aren't southern anymore. A Northeastern city wont become less northern if the people leaving were being replaced by southerners at a ratio of 1:1.
I've gone into detail about this elsewhere, but many Southerners feel that way because for the longest time, the South was an overwhelmingly rural region and most major Southern cities are quite young as major cities, having experienced the bulk of their growth and development after WWII. Outside of New Orleans and border cities like DC, Baltimore, and Louisville (Baltimore and Louisville being highly industrialized for Southern cities), there simply weren't any big cities in the South up until the 1940s or so. As a matter of fact, it was massive federal investment in the WWI/WWII years that provided the catalyst for several Southern cities, like Atlanta, to boom. And up until the 70s/80s, much of the growth in those cities was attributable to rural Southerners who were seeking better job opportunities, particularly around the time the Great Migration began in the 1930s (and rural Southerners moving to Southern cities was also part of that mass migration although it's usually only portrayed as rural Southerners moving North and West). The so-called Reverse Migration began in the 70s with Blacks who were born or had roots in the South comprising a big part of that, with international migration picking up in the decades afterwards. So for many Southerners, Southern cities are less Southern just by virtue of being cities. Mass urbanization is still a relatively new thing for the South; this is why so many defining characteristics of the South are rooted in its rural/agricultural past. And because this mass urbanization of the South is happening in the postwar era in cities that lack geographical constraints to growth for the most part, it is characterized by auto-centric, lower-density development, in contrast to Northern cities which tend to be more compact with more multifamily housing and better served by mass transit.
Northern cities have been experiencing large migration waves from people from other parts of the country, particularly the South, and internationally for 100-150 years now at least. They have also long had big city infrastructure and amenities in place, having urbanized rapidly in an earlier period. So a bunch of Southerners moving to a Northern city is part of what it means to be a Northern city: receiving people from other parts of the country and the world, which they've been doing almost from the very beginning. And whenever you get a lot of people moving to a city, regardless of where they come from, it's only going to result in a bigger, busier, faster-paced city--which Northern cities have long been used to but that's still more of a new phenomenon for Southern cities.
Location: Appalachian New York, Formerly Louisiana
4,409 posts, read 6,540,027 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by murksiderock
I don't totally disagree with you, but Maryland is historically southern. Maryland didn't pack its bags and move further north. The national perception of what is considered southern has changed, more than any other region, in the last 25-50 years. Maryland is still Maryland, so if it was only lightly southern to begin with, then it was. But there are Virginia parallels for every Maryland region, there are more Virginia parallels to Maryland than any other state, yet let's be very frank: the perception of Virginia as being "so much more southern" than Maryland is rooted in the Capital of the Confederacy propaganda, which has misrepresented parts of Virginia on a number of levels for a long time...
I've said this before, were Virginia never the capital if the CSA, the national perception on VA would be markedly different. As it is, people view both states through an irrational lens for neighboring states that share centuries of history and culture that is clearly, obviously, undeniably, still in play today. They don't belong to different regions, and this agenda to separate them is asinine. Sure, by virtue of location, Maryland has a stronger northern inclination. That's about it, though...
Strongly worded and well put. However, I disagree with the idea that Maryland is more like Virginia than it is Pennsylvania or southern New Jersey. And I do base this off of hands-on experience with the state, up to and including family of mine living there.
A lot of Virginia is quite Carolinian/southern Appalachian. A lot of Maryland is strongly Mid-Atlantic and central Appalachian. The only parts of Virginia that truly mirror Maryland, are the parts that others debate aren't southern either.
History can only be used to a certain degree, because if I were feeling ambitious I would tell you that historically upstate NY was the confederacy of the Haudenosaunee (for much longer than it has been NY). Based on that, we are not part of NY or the northeast, we are the modern nation of the people of the longhouse.
Hyperbolic, perhaps, but not based in a lie either.
The fact is Southern culture kind of got trapped in a time warp while the North and Midwest urbanized with the Industrial Revolution. The urbanization was a vacuum for immigrants and change. So a South that was already pretty predisposed to localism thanks to poor infrastructure, hyper-sectionalism, and distance was also the one area of the nation not experiencing endless waves of immigration. So while the Knickerbockers saw their New Amsterdam vanish before them sometime in the early 19th century and the Boston Brahamins made their peace with the Dubliners soon after, an area the size of Western Europe stayed blissfully isolated from such dramatic changes. Air condition and civil rights helped change that, but in the meantime Southern culture such as it was had an extra 100 years to take hold. So long story short (too late), Southern culture is easier to spot and more noticeable in its changing at this moment in time. If the internet and us had been around during the Gilded Age, it is likely there would have been teeth-gnashing over the North and Midwest looking nothing like it did in our grandparent’s days.
If you're curious as to why so many are saying they're not Southerners, A New Mind: What Does it Mean to be a "Southerner" is supposedly a good read. Below is an interview with the author and a snipbit of what she said.
HEADLEE: Before we go further with our discussion, though, let's kind of define what we're talking about here when we say the South. You say, and let me quote here, you say it's where there's sugar in the tea and not in the cornbread. But geographically speaking, what's in the South?
THOMPSON: Well, any definition of the South is going to be idiosyncratic because there's no - there isn't any good definition of the South. I started with the 11 states of the old Confederacy. So Maryland gets off the hook and so does Missouri and Kentucky. And then at that point I sort of started whittling it down and I used as a rough guideline my friend Joel Garreau's book "The Nine Nations of North America." I kind of lopped off everything but east Texas and I kind of stopped halfway down Florida because southern Florida is not Southern.
HEADLEE: The south of Orlando is no longer the South.
THOMPSON: Right. Right. And I excluded some of the close in suburbs in northern Virginia which...
Why are southerners so eager to include Nova and DC in the south? I don't get it.
Who knows.. you'd think what the locals identify as would trump any outsiders thoughts. I haven't heard any locals saying they're Southerners but I have heard people from the South clearly state that they are from the South when asked where they're from in DC.
At the end of the day, if someone were to visit the US and wanted the Southern experience, DC wouldn't even make it onto anyone's top 10 places to see.
Ummm because they are Southern. They represent what the South is becoming (urbanized and multicultural). What it means to be Southern should be allowed to change over time. The geography (and topography... you know, the things that actually define different regions) doesn’t change. It ain’t the sweet tea, which urban Virginia never drank anyway, that defines the South. Norfolk and Charleston were also huge ports of entry for immigrants. Richmond, Newport News and Atlanta have had large Jewish populations for 200 years. The first Jewish cemetery in North America is located in Richmond (there’s also a Jewish Confederate cemetery...weird).
Strongly worded and well put. However, I disagree with the idea that Maryland is more like Virginia than it is Pennsylvania or southern New Jersey. And I do base this off of hands-on experience with the state, up to and including family of mine living there.
A lot of Virginia is quite Carolinian/southern Appalachian. A lot of Maryland is strongly Mid-Atlantic and central Appalachian. The only parts of Virginia that truly mirror Maryland, are the parts that others debate aren't southern either.
History can only be used to a certain degree, because if I were feeling ambitious I would tell you that historically upstate NY was the confederacy of the Haudenosaunee (for much longer than it has been NY). Based on that, we are not part of NY or the northeast, we are the modern nation of the people of the longhouse.
Hyperbolic, perhaps, but not based in a lie either.
But those parts of Virginia have over 75% of the population, so I can't shrug it off as "the only parts" that share similarities with Maryland. Those areas have long cultural crossover with Maryland. No doubt, so do parts of other states, but I don't see anybody having stronger ties, all things considered, to Maryland than Virginia...
The areas where most Virginians reside has more in common with Maryland areas than Carolina areas. The areas where most Virginians reside have similarities to Carolina too, including my adolescent home of Northern Virginia. This is what happens when you border other states, you have shared culture with your neighbors...
There is nothing southern Appalachian about where the majority of Virginians live, so we're talking about a minority of the populace that most visitors do not visit...
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