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Geez. You could have used a state like North Carolina instead. Only 10% of non-Hispanic Whites voted for the Democratic candidate in Alabama compared to 26% in South Carolina. While one can argue that North Carolina only matches up favorably with Pennsylvania because "Yankees are moving there!" those Yankees, especially the White Yankees, are moving to the urban areas.
81% - Philadelphia County 61% - Orange
61% - Lackawanna County 59% - Durham
53% - Erie County 53% - Buncombe
50% - Montgomery County
49% - Allegheny County
49% - Delaware County
48% - Luzerne County 47% - Jackson 46% - Watauga
46% - Bucks County
46% - Lehigh County
46% - Monroe County
46% - Northampton County 45% - Madison County
45% - Centre County
44% - PENNSYLVANIA
44% - Chatham 44% - Swain
43% - Carbon County
43% - Chester County
43% - Mercer County 43% - Yancey 42% - Haywood 42% - Wake
42% - Berks County 41% - Dare
41% - Beaver County
41% - Clinton County
41% - Fayette County
41% - Lawrence County
41% - Wyoming County
40% - Columbia County
40% - Elk County
39% - New Hanover 39% - Mecklenburg 39% - Transylvania
39% - Dauphin County
39% - Schuylkill County
39% - Warren County
39% - Washington County
37% - Greene County
37% - Pike County 36% - Polk County
36% - Cambria County
36% - Crawford County
36% - Indiana County
36% - Montour County
36% - Northumberland County
36% - Susquehanna County 35% - Guilford
35% - Cumberland County
35% - Wayne County 34% - Forsyth 34% - Macon 34% - Henderson 34% - Hyde 34% - Burke
34% - Bradford County
34% - Lancaster County
34% - Westmoreland County 33% - Ashe
33% - Venango County 32% - McDowell
32% - Cameron County
32% - Sullivan County
32% - York County 31% - Brunswick 31% - Allegany
31% - Adams County
31% - Clearfield County
31% - McKean County 30% - Pitt
30% - Lebanon County 29% - Pasquotank 29% - Anson
29% - Blair County
29% - Butler County
29% - Tioga County
29% - Union County 28% - Clay 28% - Surry 28% - Graham 28% - Warren 28% - Currituck 28% - Catawba
28% - Armstrong County
28% - Clarion County
28% - Snyder County 27% - Caldwell 27% - Lee 27% - Alamance 27% - Carrabus 27% - Franklin
27% - Lycoming County
27% - Perry County 26% - Moore 26% - Granville 26% - Cherokee 25% - Hertford 25% - Scotland 25% - Pender 25% - Wilkes 25%- Carteret 25% - Montgomery 25% - Lincoln 25% - Vance 25% - Richmond 25% - Chowan
25% - Franklin County
25% - Huntingdon County 24% - Iredell 24% - Rutherford 24% - Pamlico 24% - Avery 24% - Alexander 24% - Gates 24% - Mitchell 24% - Gaston
24% - Jefferson County
24% - Juniata County
24% - Potter County
24% - Somerset County 23% - Union 23% - Rowan 23% - Halifax 23% - Perquimans 23% - Rockinghman 23% - Johnston 23% - Davie
23% - Mifflin County 22% - Craven 22% - Cumberland 22% - Tyrell 22% - Person 22% - Davidson
22% - Forest County 21% - Yadkin 21% - Cleveland 21% - Stanley 21% - Northampton 20% - Harnett 20% - Beaufort 20% Edgecombe 20% - Hoke 20% -Wilson
20% - Bedford County 19% - Camden 19% - Columbus 19% - Caswell 19% - Randolph 19% - Nash 19% - Onslow
18% - Fulton County 18% - Bladen 17% - Duplin 17% - Martin 17% - Robeson 16% - Jones 16% - Washington
15% - Wayne
15% - Greene
14% - Lenoir
Last edited by BajanYankee; 09-19-2015 at 06:54 AM..
We moved to Philly from Texas a few years back and made our first visit to the central and western parts of the state. While in Somerset County for a couple of days, we were surprised to see all the confederate flags. We saw 5 within the first 24 hours and couple more the next day. They hung from flagpoles, over balconies and were on a couple of bumper stickers as well.
When I visited my in-laws in rural South Carolina, I only saw two confederate flags in an entire week. What gives?
Let's try to keep this conversation about the OP^^please, and not derail it to another Pennsylvania is (or is not) Pennsyltucky.
Obama won 30.9% of the rural non-Hispanic White vote in Pennsylvania and 25.6% of the rural non-Hispanic White vote in North Carolina (PA would be even more similar if only analyzing Western counties). I was going to do calculations for rural Wisconsin but it's pointless since Obama won so many of those counties. His weakest support in any rural Wisconsin county was 38%. There wasn't much point in doing it for NYS either since his weakest support in any rural county was 36%. But we all know that's only due to the 74 people who relocated from the NYC area to Chenango County in 2013.
We moved to Philly from Texas a few years back and made our first visit to the central and western parts of the state. While in Somerset County for a couple of days, we were surprised to see all the confederate flags. We saw 5 within the first 24 hours and couple more the next day. They hung from flagpoles, over balconies and were on a couple of bumper stickers as well.
When I visited my in-laws in rural South Carolina, I only saw two confederate flags in an entire week. What gives?
Besides, it's stupid to start a thread about the Confederate battle flag and expect there to not be a discussion about racism and political/social conservatism.
LMAO
Here's the behavior I find stupid: posters who who hijack threads to rehash the same tired old arguments in thread after thread after thread (regardless of the OP) thinking that repetition will somehow render their myopic rhetoric as indisputable fact.
To that point, as the OP, can we please adhere to the moderator's intervention:
Quote:
Originally Posted by toobusytoday
Let's try to keep this conversation about the OP^^please, and not derail it to another Pennsylvania is (or is not) Pennsyltucky.
So, that's interesting. We are, of course, with certain limitations, free to express our beliefs. In the same universe, others take in and interpret that expression.
So I'm curious: if you display a confederate flag, what are you think you are expressing by doing so? If not, what do you think others might be trying to say with such behavior?
We moved to Philly from Texas a few years back and made our first visit to the central and western parts of the state. While in Somerset County for a couple of days, we were surprised to see all the confederate flags. We saw 5 within the first 24 hours and couple more the next day. They hung from flagpoles, over balconies and were on a couple of bumper stickers as well.
When I visited my in-laws in rural South Carolina, I only saw two confederate flags in an entire week. What gives?
I think people read to much into this confederate flag thing. I never considered Confederate flags to be racist. It is part of our country's history. It has now become racist because of the Charleston shooting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by speagles84
And Fayette County makes Somerset County look ritzy.
Fayette County drags the Pittsburgh Metros median income down significantly (even though it only has 130,000 people)
Fayette and Somerset counties are very different. Fulton, Bedford and Somerset counties are very right wing, Republican, Protestant, and white. Fayette County history is much different. Much of the population traces their ancestors to southern and eastern Europeans who migrated to coal patches to work in the mines after 1890. They tended to be Catholic and became Democrats.
Fulton, Bedford and Somerset counties tended to be mostly farmers and Protestant. The mines in Somerset county came later and you didn't see the coal patches that you see in Fayette, Westmoreland, Indiana and Greene counties. Cambria and Fayette are more similar since they have similar roots. Blacks moved into Cambria and Fayette counties because there were jobs in the mines and mills. Fulton, Bedford and Somerset counties have never had much manufacturing, and the population has not fluctuated much over the past 100 years or more.
Fayette County has been on a decline since the Depression. There were 201,000 people in the county in 1940, and around 155,000 when I was growing up in the 1960s. It hasn't bottomed out!
Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee
It's not fallacious. It's mostly Republican areas where Confederate battle flags are flown, which is not to say that all Republican areas fly the flag. I really doesn't take much intellectual acumen to make this observation.
Besides, it's stupid to start a thread about the Confederate battle flag and expect there to not be a discussion about racism and political/social conservatism.
I don't think you will see much difference in how many Confederate flags are flown (or hung on pickup trucks) as you travel across Bedford, Somerset, Fayette or Westmoreland counties. More people are flying them because it is now controversial. The flyers are typically younger, white, beer drinking, more rural or small town guys who drive pickups.
I think people read to much into this confederate flag thing. I never considered Confederate flags to be racist. It is part of our country's history. It has now become racist because of the Charleston shooting.
Right.
Quote:
Originally Posted by villageidiot1
I don't think you will see much difference in how many Confederate flags are flown (or hung on pickup trucks) as you travel across Bedford, Somerset, Fayette or Westmoreland counties. More people are flying them because it is now controversial. The flyers are typically younger, white, beer drinking, more rural or small town guys who drive pickups.
People have been talking about confederate battle flags flying in Pennsylvania since well before the Charleston shooting. This was written 17 years ago.
Quote:
The prevalence of the flag of the former slave states shouldn’t be too surprising, as a so-called “rebel flag” on a pick-up truck is a fairly common sight for anyone accustomed to driving along Route 40 west of Washington, or on any of the rural roads in our area.
During the Pike Festival, at the intersection of routes 40 and 221, between Claysville and Taylorstown, a Confederate flag could be purchased bearing the slogan “The South Will Rise Again.” Last November an identical flag (possibly even the same one) was held from the back of a pick-up truck by a group of people who also displayed the flag’s colors on bandanas and T-shirts as they yelled racial slurs and death threats at a crowd of Washington NAACP members and supportive Claysville residents marching in protest of a recent cross burning in the small burg. This is something that leads me to suspect the modern popularity of the Confederate flag — particularly in our area far to the north of the Mason-Dixon line – reflects something other than the fact that Lynryd Skynyrd had a couple decent songs.
So let me get this straight. The White rural vote in Pennsylvania is very similar to the White rural vote in North Carolina. You've got a journalist talking about the Confederate battle flag being a common sight in his town back in the 90s. Yet we're supposed to believe that there is no cultural schism between the Delaware Valley and Western Pennsylvania. Or at least we're supposed to think this schism is basically the same as the schism between, say, NYC and Western New York.
So let me get this straight. The White rural vote in Pennsylvania is very similar to the White rural vote in North Carolina. You've got a journalist talking about the Confederate battle flag being a common sight in his town back in the 90s. Yet we're supposed to believe that there is no cultural schism between the Delaware Valley and Western Pennsylvania. Or at least we're supposed to think this schism is basically the same as the schism between, say, NYC and Western New York.
We've already discussed the political aspect in depth, with which clearly not everyone agrees.
It has yet to be discussed, though, that even though we can safely assume that 99.9% of people in rural Pennsylvania do NOT fly confederate flags, we're still to believe that the entire region is full of Southern-sympathizing racists?
And here I thought the fundamental way to avoid racism is to not subscribe to outrageous generalizations and stereotypes based on superficiality. How interesting that this principle isn't applicable when it comes to characterizing rural white people.
And here I thought the fundamental way to avoid racism is to not subscribe to outrageous generalizations and stereotypes based on superficiality. How interesting that this principle isn't applicable when it comes to characterizing rural white people.
I literally laughed out loud when I read this. Literally. "And here I thought the fundamental way to avoid racism is not to subscribe to outrageous generalizations and stereotypes..." What are these "outrageous generalizations and stereotypes" I've subscribed to? That's nice rhetoric but it sounds nearly as smug as an "All Lives Matter" retort. This discussion has been largely factual so far so I'm not even sure why you felt compelled to write something like that.
Here are the "outrageous" facts I have raised so far.
1. Western Pennsylvania has settlement patterns similar to the Lower Midwest and the Upland South. Areas settled by early Scots-Irish and German settlers have a different political culture from areas farther north settled by New England Yankees and later late 19th Century Germans (Wisconsin, Minnesota, NE Ohio, Upstate NY). Scholars attribute the Northern Vowel Shift to this settlement pattern. You can read about this here.
2. The ANES shows Pennsylvania voters being far more conservative on social issues than any state in the Northeast and more conservative on social issues than Virginia voters during the 2000 election.
3. The rural white vote in Pennsylvania is comparable to the rural White vote in North Carolina.
4. The Confederate battle flags did not all of a sudden become popular after the Charleston shooting. I pointed to an article written by Damon Krane in which he states that the Confederate flag is not an uncommon sight in Western Pennsylvania in 1998.
Feel free to point out the "outrageous generalizations and stereotypes" in the assertions above.
You guys are taking offense to the notion that a cultural schism exists in Pennsylvania as if it's the only state where it exists. It still largely exists between Northern and Southern California today though the differences aren't so apparent today as they've been masked to a great extent by very significant demographic change (with racial minorities moving in and SoCal Whites moving to Arizona, Nevada and Texas). NorCal and SoCal also have different settlement histories, which play some role in the political culture that eventually developed in each region.
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