What do people mean by "southern" and "Midwestern"? (Kansas City: universities, to live)

[MoSouthernMan]

Originally Posted by tuckessee

Kentuckian chiming in here... Just noticed none of y'all mention climate or flora and fauna being indicators of culture. After all we are products of our environments. Southern Missouri is a lot like Kentucky, in which you find cypress/tupelo swamps, southern species of plants, animals and southern crops. Also southern Missouri, like 99% of Kentucky is within the humid subtropical climate zone, whereas most of the Midwest is a humid continental climate.

Well northern KY right across the river from Cincinnati is cooler than STL in the winter, and Lexington's average temps also also colder than St. Louis as well in the summer. Eastern KY seems cooler due to the higher elevations. The far southern areas of KY have basically the same kind of weather that the far southern Missouri and northern Arkansas Ozarks and the bootheel have which is within the sub tropical zones.

The news sub tropical map has shown the subtropics have been extending further north over the years.

http://nowdata.rcc-acis.org/LMK/pubACIS_results

[tuckessee]

Yup that's why I said 99%, the three counties across from Cincinnati are on the border of the climate zones, whereas the rest of Kentucky is within cFa. Obviously the mountainous areas are cooler, but still hot and humid during the long summer and whatever accumulation of snow they get is a joke by northern standards. St. Louis does get about as hot as here, and I'd say that's due to an urban heat island, and warm gulf air making it that far up the river valley

[MoSouthernMan]

Originally Posted by tuckessee

Yup that's why I said 99%, the three counties across from Cincinnati are on the border of the climate zones, whereas the rest of Kentucky is within cFa. Obviously the mountainous areas are cooler, but still hot and humid during the long summer and whatever accumulation of snow they get is a joke by northern standards. St. Louis does get about as hot as here, and I'd say that's due to an urban heat island, and warm gulf air making it that far up the river valley

The heat island makes stl a little warmer in the summer.

It's odd but the new average highs from 1980-2010 the warmest it gets in the summer is 89 for average high. The old period 1970-2000 had our warmest average high at 90 in the summer.

Now southwest Missouri can get quite warm in the summer. In most areas the average highs there during the warmest period in the summer is low 90s.

[RDM66]

Originally Posted by MoSouthernMan

Interesting.

Also Harry Truman's ancestors were southerners. His mom wouldn't stay in the Lincoln bedroom.

And he also was born in 1884 and grew up mostly in the far western part of the "Little Dixie" area and at that time that area still had some southern influences since the Civil War was only 20 years earlier.

So that is not out of the ordinary Truman could have had southern influence in his speech pattern due to his parents and that he was raised in an area that at the time still had some southern influences.

However someone raised in the Independence area today will not have a southern accent. That area is Midwestern today.

Sorry to bring this topic up again, but the Kansas City area still had some strong southern influences at the time when Truman grew up there. The area was settled by people from Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, and Tennessee. During the Civil War the Kansas City area and the counties to the south were strongholds of the Confederacy, especially Jackson, Cass, Bates, and Vernon counties. They have one of the most unusual histories of any place in Missouri during the Civil War. They fell under General Ewings' Order No 11. The federal government attempted to depopulate this area of southerns at the barrel of gun because they were a nuisance. They didn't succeed.

Order No. 11 - Wikipedia

In these counties on the western border of Missouri we had a separate border war with Kansas, which was a Civil War within a Civil War that started nearly 6 years before the real Civil War (Bleeding Kansas). It was the Southern Confederates of Missouri vs. the New England Yankees of Kansas. (Most Kansans at the time were from the transplants from the northeast.)

Some people say this war has never really ended. There is still a lingering sense of animosity in the Kansas City area between the people on the Missouri side and Kansas side that goes back 150 years. We might not be shooting at each other anymore, but we're constantly trading barbs and slamming each other. (Example: The bas-tards in Kansas don't know how to drive. )

The modern-day stereotypes in the Kansas City area run like this:

People in Kansas, especially in Johnson County, KS: Highly educated, sophisticated, arrogant yuppies (Basically Yankees)
People in Missouri: Dumb, white trash rednecks who still clinging to their guns and religion (Basically Confederates)

If you don't believe me, just read the read the Kansas City threads on this site. It is played out all over the place, especially in the never-ending "redneck debate." It's also a ghost that hangs over every KU vs Mizzou match-up. Whenever I see my friends in Lawrence, Kansas, I usually tell them that if the town burns to the ground it would be a capital improvement. Whenever you read a story on the Kansas City Star website about how the governor of Kansas is using tax breaks to lure businesses away from Missouri, it unleashes a steady stream of bile against Kansas in the comment section.

I know this will sound weird, but we're still fighting the Civil War here in Kansas City on a day-to-day basis in 2013.

[STLviaMSP]

Back to the OP and trying to understand what makes a place southern versus midwestern.

Churches are a mounmental piece of the picture. Southern areas have a lot of churches backed by the Southern Baptist Convention, which is a PAC, er, I mean "church" that is responsible for spearheading an astounding number of boneheaded, socially and economically regressive nonsense. Look up a who's who of southern political figures and their religious backgrounds. Midwestern congregatations tend to be more Lutheran, Methodist, UCC, Catholic, UU, etc. Generally more tolerant. Also no self respecting midwesterner would be a member of the SBC. These mostly non-overlapping religious traditions are very likely at the center of the culture wars that have been going on for 150 years. The people of the south generally were either slaveholders, white indentured servants or some other variety of poor white, or black slaves. A very hierarchal culture with massive social/economic inequality, economically impoverished except for the few, and mostly springing from uneducated roots. Compared to the immigrants of the north, who generally had skills and education and came here free, often to flee from the kind of conditions that were prevalent in the south, hence the general lack of European immigration to the south. This is why almost all of the top tier universities are in the north or on the west coast. I could go on, but this should be enough for you to get the point - the south is recovering from and will continue to recover from its many deficits for years to come. But it might as well be a different country as its heritage has almost nothing in common with most of the rest of the country.

[julian17033]

Depending on where geographically you lived and which side you agreed with many Missourians fought for the Confederacy.

Many of my mother's descendants came from the boot heel and up into the St. Louis area and all fought for the Confederacy.

I grew up in Alton, IL across the river and slightly northeast of St. Louis and many from that area also fought on the Confederate side despite it being 2 hours south of Springfield, IL and Alton being the site of the Lincoln Douglas debate.

Much of Southern Mo and Southern IL aligns itself with the south despite what geographic boundaries dictate.

[RDM66]

Originally Posted by STLviaMSP

Midwestern congregatations tend to be more Lutheran, Methodist, UCC, Catholic, UU, etc. Generally more tolerant. Also no self respecting midwesterner would be a member of the SBC

Come again?

SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in Missouri. Only one out of every five people in Missouri is a member of the SBC. Religion in Missouri

You need to get out of St Louis and meet the real Missouri.

I also disagree with Wikipedia's official numbers. It says that Catholics slightly outnumber Baptists. But as we all know the Catholics only go to church on Christmas and Easter, while the Baptists meet every Sunday to plot the overthrow of the government and current social order. ;-)

[imbored198824]

in my two county region that I live in Stone/Taney county there are THREE catholic churches for almost 100,000 people!!! We probably have close to 100 baptist churches.

[STLviaMSP]

"You need to get out of St Louis and meet the real Missouri."

The "real" Missouri? I wasn't aware that your little corner of the state was anything more than a misplaced section of Arkansas or Tennessee or whatever. Mainline Protestants, Catholics, Jews, etc together easily outnumber the SBC in MO and certainly form a decisive majority. That cannot be said of actual southern states. But I'll admit there are just enough southern minded folks to royally f*** the state's politics.

[RDM66]

Originally Posted by imbored198824

in my two county region that I live in Stone/Taney county there are THREE catholic churches for almost 100,000 people!!! We probably have close to 100 baptist churches.

Where I grew up, the Baptist church controlled the whole town. From the mayor's seat on down to dogcatcher.