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The Mason-Dixon line is at the Ohio River and Louisville lies south of the Ohio Rive as does the rest of the State of Kentucky,so I would consider it in the south,it has a southern appeal, but not a deep south feel like Alabama.
The Mason-Dixon line is at the Ohio River and Louisville lies south of the Ohio Rive as does the rest of the State of Kentucky,so I would consider it in the south,it has a southern appeal, but not a deep south feel like Alabama.
Geographically anything South of the Mason-Dixon line is Southern, that includes Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, even Missouri Oklahoma and Florida. Historically we speak of Southern as the confederacy which did not include West Virginia nor Kentucky.
I'm originally from West Virginia, and growing up I can say that we never considered ourselves "Southern" at all. Some folks I knew would get rather peeved when people made reference to WV as being a Southern state as well.
As far as Kentucky goes, I had little exposure to it growing up other than going across the line to Ashland (sleepy town then). Later one of the people I started hanging out with was from Winchester, Kentucky - and I have to say, based on THAT town, I developed an incredibly negative view of Kentucky. His family, old/ex friends from there - and even a visit to the place .. like "wow"... every negative Southern stereotype you could imagine rolled up into one little town. Scary. For years my impression of the whole state could only be based on that one place. Later however, I got the opportunity to spend a little time in Lexington and Louisville, and came to realize that Winchester is just one of those lost, "land that time forgot" towns that probably every state has and wants to forget about.
Still, while Lexington and Louisville were nice towns, I never got a "This is THE South" impression in any of the cities in Kentucky. For some reason, the only places I've been that just scream SOUTH to me are Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, GA. Nothing in Kentucky screamed like that to me (well, other than the people shooting each other in Winchester.. another story. LOL).
I did not want to post on this thread but I have to disagree with you Atlantagreg, a number of West Virginians consider themselves southern, though perhaps you don't. And they have every right to, since only the counties bordering the Ohio/Pa lines voted against secession. Otherwise they would still be part of Virginia, and demonstrably southern. As far as KY goes, I really don't see why anyone would not consider it southern. My real question is WHY, with a large number of immigrants into New England and the North, do people not consider restructuring New England. Why do they pick on the south as far as erosion of culture? There are cities like Lowell, MA, which are almost predominately immigrant. Are they still part of New England, or should we redraw the lines there?
This question is also often asked about Texas, Florida, and Virginia...even Arkansas sometime!
And to answer it, really comes down to that never to be solved question of what states are Southern? And why they are considered so! So when you ask how do most other Southerners see Kentucky (or Texas, Virginia, etc), the answer is predicated on what exactly is meant by "The South" and, by extension, "Southerners"
I am not trying to make this complicated, but rather to note that the validity of the answer is going to depend largely on what you yourself subjectively consider to be the said South and Southerners.
Personally, "my South" is the 11 Old Confederate states plus Kentucky...and I think there are extremely good reasons for counting West Virginia and, to a lesser extent, parts of Oklahoma into the "extended family." But again, that comes back to whether or not one accepts my definition of the South.
Here is a map which I think outlines it pretty well:
States in dark red almost always considered Southern, those in "medium" usually considered Southern, while those in stripes range from often (West Virginia) to extremely rarely (Delaware).
Hope that helps a bit!
This is a really good post TexReb.....it's Sooner (yeh, I changed the username to reflect my hobbies and not my obsession with college football).
And as we have noted in the past, my homestate of Oklahoma has very strong southern tendencies in terms of dialect, music, food, religion, pretty much overall culture, and is below the Mason-Dixon....but it is a far cry from the Deep South. (And I will say that many Okies--myself included--are just fine with that.) Also, geographically it is not really in the South. For a state to be "truly" southern (whatever that is) I would argue that the litmus test for today is that the state is unquestionably geographically southern as well as unquestionably culturally southern....see MS, AL, GA, SC. IMO, all the rest of the states in the south (excluding Delaware and Maryland...c'mon folks, I lived in Boston for a year and felt that I was just as much in Yankee Land in my visits to Maryland and Delaware as I was in Massachusetts) have different degrees of southerness as you get more and more removed from the Deep South.
Growing up we were always taught that Oklahoma was a Southwestern state heavily influenced by southern culture. In fact, I think that is the best way to characterize OK.....clearly part of the Southwest in terms of heavy influences from Native Americans/Cowboy farming/ranching culture as well as a strong Redneck vibe infused with southern elements. Most Okies I know would probably agree with this designation (i.e. Southwestern but with obvious southern traits).
It's also funny that yout don't count Virginia as Southern since it was essentially the birth of Southern culture and the first Southern state. VA too has a right to argue they're more "Southern" than KY.
The only reason I don't think of virginia as southern is because when I think of virginia I think of the washington dc area. But like I said Ive never been to virginia so really I have no idea...
I hate to beak this to you, KB, but I'm from Tennessee and I very rarely think about Kentucky. Kind of like those relatives that you just take for granted.
I know this is weird but I wish we could just take all the people border states and put them in the undebated South. Then the Southern factor would become so strong it wouldn't matter if we had some Northern transplants.
I hate to beak this to you, KB, but I'm from Tennessee and I very rarely think about Kentucky. Kind of like those relatives that you just take for granted.
Come on up and see what we have! I bet you'll like it! I LOVE Tenneessee myself.
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