Quote:
Originally Posted by happymom4
I'm with you Mrs. G..I'm new to this thread and very rarely go into the Missouri forum since I'm in Georgia but my Aunt who is from Missouri drew my attention to it and she's too genteel to get into a heated debate over Missouri's southerness with Mr. Afj (who is also obsessed with sweet tea I've noticed in almost all his posts)
Afj, why do you need to be so rude and condenscending to people who don't agree with you? If people feel Mo is southern, why does it matter to you? I still consider it southern, and I'm a Ga girl and I don't care if you tell me I'm wrong..I'm not going to go cry in my sweet tea...you go ahead and believe it's midwest if you want to, bless your heart.
|
I started this thread not knowing what it was...but this has been going on for five months and I reached a conclusion about 3 months ago after lots of research and hearing enough responses from people. THis state has never been truly Southern. That's my whole point. St. Louis is not a Southern city at all, and truth be told never was, and I for one am without a doubt not a Southerner. Name me one thing that is Southern about St. Louis and Northern Missouri. I don't speak like a Southerner, the culture I've grown up around has been Midwestern, and so have the speech patterns. And it is also a fact that generally people from the Northern half of Missouri (which I use as Jefferson City dividing line) typically consider themselves Midwesterners. And that is from just about any source you'll find out there, not me. If I were a Southerner, I would know it...I'm the farthest thing there is from one. I have nothing against the South, as people just love saying I do as their way of disproving my statements. I'll give it this much..if Missouri is Southern, the most it is Southern by is 50%. Historically, this state has never been 100% Southern. Though it was a slave state, it was divided from the very beginning of its creation. In the Civil War, the pro-secessionist government was not recognized by the majority of Missourians...evidenced by the fact that twice as many people fought for the Union, and Missouri's economy also never depended on slavery and because the crops were Midwestern. Plus, Missouri freed Dred Scott. After the Civil War, Missouri cut the majority of its ties to the South....that is something I've read time and again. During the Great Migration, like the Midwest, it gained in African American population and while it may have been more segregated than other Midwestern states, it was never anywhere near as segregated as the South, plus it was desegregated before the South, and without any type of resistance. The best argument you can make for Missouri historically is that it is a border state, not a Southern state. This state before the Civil War was home to both many anti-slavery and pro-slavery citizens. Missouri without question is geographically and economically Midwestern except in its extreme Southern areas. Also, Southern American English, if you look it up in on wikipedia, comprises only about a quarter of Missouri. Also, in a poll done by the amount of people who consider themselves Southerners, only 23% of Missourians surveyed considered their communities Southern, and under 20% actually considered themselves Southerners. There are a lot of Protestants, Baptists and Catholics in Missouri, but then again, you find similar characteristics in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, which also contain many Catholics and Baptists. This was all information collected over a long period of time after I posed the question. The other thing is, while I like sweet tea, except for McDonalds or Cracker Barrel, which have sweet tea in both the North and South now, sweet tea is a scarcity in most of the state...that is something you find in no other Southern state except maybe for Southern Florida. How one could conclude Missouri belongs in the South given all this information is beyond me. You can make arguments that it is a border state, and that is not necessarily a wrong view, because some parts of this state are truly Southern (think Mississippi Delta and parts near Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee.) , others are both Southern and Midwestern (think the Ozarks and above Cape Girardeau, at the latitude of Illinois), but generally to me a border state means 50% Southern and Midwestern...to me and apparently a lot of surveyed Missourians, that is not true. As for Missouri being truly Southern, especially today, that's quite a difficult argument to make given all this other information), and St. Louis is without a doubt Midwestern...this city has nothing Southern about it and everything in common with the Midwest. If the truth can't satisfy the majority, fine by me. It's still the truth. this has been a closed topic to me for quite some time...it was not when i started the thread. so if anybody wonders why I disagree with people now...this is the reason why. In short, it bothers when people deem Missouri Southern is because the facts don't say that.
Welcome to City-Data.com forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with 400,000 other registered members. User profiles and some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your free account you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 13,000 posts/day about local topics and you will see fewer ads. Within the last few months our forum was cited in an article in 15 newspaper and in a story on AOL's homepage.
10-01-2007, 01:35 AM
a bit of both...
Parts of Missouri lean towards a southern feel and the rest towards a midwestern feel.
] is a lake, whereas other person will call it a pond, based on their different background, thoughts, etc.
Linear Mode
