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Old 09-25-2007, 05:20 PM
 
Location: Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex
1,298 posts, read 4,271,470 times
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Interesting discussion concerning Missouri and Oklahoma. Here in the DFW area there are alot of Oklahomans who have moved here over the years to live and work. I've known quite a few of them and they have the southern accent and say "y'all" and "fixin to", etc. That's an easy and recognizable criteria right there if someone was going to start with one. But then I don't know where alot of them came from in OK originally, one I know for sure, who is a good friend, is from Lawton which I think is in the southwest portion of the state? You could surely mistake him for a Southerner/Texan just by the way he talks. Interesting to note, this is the OK state meal: fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecue pork, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas. Pretty Southern, huh?

JDinBalt was correct regarding the Indians siding with the Confederacy. They were tired of the U.S. government breaking treaties and promises so they chose to fight against them. There were several Confederate General indians including one of the more famous, General Stand Waite.

I have a friend who lives in Springfield, Missouri, she's from California originally, and she said there are people who live in the southern hills of the state who are known as hillbillies and you know who they are because they say, "y'all". Now she said this in a way that implied that these folks weren't well looked upon. I told her Texans say y'all and we aren't all hillbillies. I saw a tv special once with Missourans who sounded very Southern and I'd guess they were from this southernmost portion of the state. Also, I was on another forum where a lady from Missouri steadfastly insisted that Missouri was in the South and southern whereas most of us argued against it.
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Old 10-18-2007, 10:31 PM
 
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Default Southern Debate--mississippi Vs. Florida

Hello y'all. I'm a Floridian who is proud of his Southern roots! So, what makes most people declare Mississippi a true and clear Southern state, but will openly and sometimes adamantly declare Florida to be the opposite? The "Versus Debate" on Southern states could be more or less applied to several states in the South, but I'll use Mississippi vs. Florida as an example.

Mississippi and Florida both share the same or very similar histories as far as the South's concerned. They both had economies that largely depended on Cotton and secondly sugar. They were both slave-holding states. Mississippi was the 2nd Southern state to secede from the USA and Florida was the 3rd out of 13--both being founding members of the Confederate States of America. They both fought valiantly for the Confederacy and contributed much to the Southern cause. The Confederate flags flew just as prominantly in Florida as in Mississippi, and still do today might I add! The Reconstruction (or the BIG JOKE), affected both states. As the 20th century rolled around, Jim Crow laws were firmly entrenched in both states. Segregation was equally applied and inforced in both states. Ku Klux Klan and other such orginizations were equally involved, entrenched, and active in the politics of both states. As the 50s and 60s brought the Civil Rights movements in Mississippi and Florida, both states were pretty much neck in neck for Klan uprisings and other racial riots, and all of the unrest that entails. The standard population of both Mississippi and Florida both had pretty much possessed the same Southern dialects and accents. Even Miami had a substantial Southern speech that lasted up until the 70s! So, what makes people emphatically declare Mississippi to be Southern and Florida not?

It's simple. Florida, since the 50s and 60s, and particularly the 70s forward, has steadily grown from immigration outside the South primarily. True, Southerners from other areas of the South have steadily moved to Florida as well, but nowhere near the numbers of people from the North and Canada! The international population moving into Florida has also been staggering! Florida's population grew from around 2.5 million in the 1950s to over 18 million in 2007! Mississippi's similar population of around 2.1 million in the 1950s has grown to only around 3 million in 2007. Mississippi's current population was what Florida's population was back in the late 50s early 60s! This clearly shows that Florida has grown from more than her own population. She's grown from everywhere on the globe pretty much, particularly the North and Canada! Another factor some might cite is that Florida's 1860 population was only around 140,000 people, the least populated Southern state. Mississippi's 1860 population was around 791,000! Less Southern people means less Southern culture. This would be true, but, after the War Between the States, many Southerners moved to Florida from other parts of the South that saw more destruction, particularly neighboring Georgia, but also from Alabama and the Carolinas as well. This more than compensated for Florida's earlier small population and sort of evened the playing board so to speak.

The majority of these transplants to Florida who were obviously not Southern, flocked to the then small towns of Miami, West Palm Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, and other such South Florida coastal towns. This caused them to boom and sprawl very quickly. As this occured, the towns became less and less Southern and more and more "Northern" in culture. Florida, off the beaten path, the rural areas and still small towns of not only North Florida, but Central, and South Florida as well, remained Southern culturally and linguistically and still does more or less to this day. Just visit the small Everglades' towns of South Florida or the citrus and cattle areas of Central Florida, and you're culturally in Dixie every bit as much as Mississippi! Nowadays, when people visit Florida, they will most likely visit those cities that have lost most or all but their entire Southern culture, including accent. This, over time, gives people the false impression that Florida is not Southern. "Well, huh huh huh! I've been coming to Florida (probably Miami or Tampa) for 20 years and I rarely if ever heard a Southern accent! So No! Florida isn't Southern!" They mistakenly and ignorantly might I add, base all of Florida on a few large cities and their urban sprawl. This would be like stating that Georgia's not Southern because of Atlanta, which has, like Miami or Tampa, lost great portions of it's Southern-ness due to Northern and international immigrations.

If Mississippi had experienced the same immigrations by the same peoples and in the same numbers as Florida has. And if Mississippi's current population was over 18 million and growing. And if Florida's current population was only around 3 million. People would be saying just the opposite! "Mississippi is definately not a Southern state, but Florida on the other hand is definately part of the South!" That's exactly what people would be saying if the shoe was on the other foot.

Texas is a lot like Florida, but has been so widely recognized and seen in movies portraying Texans with there Southern drawls, that it has kept alive and reinforced this notion that all Texans are Southern. When, in fact, that's not the case. Texas, like Florida, has seen an influx of millions and millions of people from the North and around the world. Texas falls between Florida and Mississippi on the Southern debate scale. It can swing either way depending on who's debating. Mississippi will always or a good 99.99 percent of the time be classed as truely Southern, whereas Florida might be only occasionally referred to as a Southern state and even less as a true Southern state. Forty or fifty years ago, Florida was equated with the rest of the South without question. But not so today. If people would educate themselves and travel off the beaten path all over Florida, they would realize they are still driving through Dixie. I hope this explained it for y'all!
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Old 10-18-2007, 10:44 PM
 
158 posts, read 444,877 times
Reputation: 83
Default Boundaries Of The South

The Modern South (Dixie Land) technically consists of 17 states plus the District of Columbia:

The Lower (Deep) South-7 states:

South Carolina
Mississippi
Florida
Alabama
Georgia
Louisiana
Texas

The Middle (Mid) South-4 states:

Virginia
Arkansas
Tennessee
North Carolina

The Upper (Border) South-6 states:

Delaware
Maryland
West Virginia
Kentucky
Missouri
Oklahoma

The Confederate South (Dixie Land) consisted of 13 states-hence the 13 stars on the Confederate flag:

South Carolina
Mississippi
Florida
Alabama
Georgia
Louisiana
Texas
Virginia
Arkansas
Tennessee
North Carolina
Missouri
Kentucky
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Old 10-18-2007, 11:13 PM
 
Location: Charlotte, NC (in my mind)
7,943 posts, read 17,185,561 times
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A state's classification is disputed because not all of the state is culturally southern. States like Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia are near 100% southern in culture, while the states the OP mentioned have regions that do not fall within that category.

Texas - I would say anything east of I-35 is southern, and anything west is southwestern. The saying is that Dallas is where the East ends and Ft. Worth is where the West begins.

Florida - This is a no brainer. The panhandle region is still southern, but the state as a whole gets less southern the farther south you go. By the time you get to Miami things start feeling more like the carribbean rather than the deep South.

Virginia - Cosmopolitan NoVA does not fall in line with southern culture. The rest of the state is in however.

Arkansas - This really shouldn't be disputed except for the fact that the NW Arkansas region (Fayetteville to Rogers) actually has more in common with Missouri and feels much more midwestern than the rest of the state.
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Old 10-19-2007, 05:45 PM
 
10,238 posts, read 19,512,599 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bchris02 View Post
A state's classification is disputed because not all of the state is culturally southern. States like Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia are near 100% southern in culture, while the states the OP mentioned have regions that do not fall within that category.
All very true, but the original question was what ARE these characteristics that make some states (such as those you mention) be unquestionably part of the "Modern" South, yet some (such as Texas, Florida, and Virginia) be debated? I think BlueSkies, Vasinger, and Florida Southern, among others, gave some good answers as to why the latter group SHOULD (Membership in the Confederacy, Jim Crow Laws, linguistic patterns, part of the old democratic "Solid South", etc).

But as to why they AREN'T? I think FloridaSouth is right with the immigation influence. Also, in Texas as least, a part of the states character was formed AFTER the War, what with the cattle boom and oil (even though it was ex-Confederate soldiers and/or westward migrating settlers from the southeast who made it possible). Also, the topography of the land, both in reality and the false image presented in those old "western movies", differs in a lot of places from that associated with the common image of the South (pine forests, "moonlight and magnolias" spanish moss, etc).

I hasten to add that, other than the immigration thing, the other "dilutions" while noteable, are superficial in many ways. For instance, the typical west Texas rancher still knows his Confederate heritage, will consider himself a Southerner (according to sociological surveys), and eat black-eyed peas on New Years Day! LOL

Anyway, IMHO (on a roll here, y'all! LOL), a lot of it -- and I would even venture to say a LOT of it -- may be in a state's embracing of their "Southerness" and an identification wholely wrapped up in the same.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bchris02 View Post
Texas - I would say anything east of I-35 is southern, and anything west is southwestern. The saying is that Dallas is where the East ends and Ft. Worth is where the West begins.
The I-35 "border" in Texas between the South and Southwest/West is sorta like the "Mason-Dixon Line" between North and South. It has been so overused as to have become almost accepted by default. LOL

But...as concerns I-35, as the dividing line between the Texas of the South and the Texas of the Southwest, I go back to something I have argued and advanced before.

That is, the term "Southwest" when referring to Texas denotes something quite different in history, culture, traditions, etc, than in states like New Mexico and Arizona which are also labeled "Southwest." As the term applies to areas west of Ft. Worth within the Lone Star State (with the trans-pecos being an exception), the term Southwest is, culturally speaking, the "Western South" (this is the label used in Raymond Gastil's classic work "Cultural Regions of the United States").

That is for sure how the early settlers would have thought of it, as the city's moniker "Where The West Begins" was NEVER intended to mean anything like "The South Stops here." Anymore than St. Louis' "Gateway to the West" meant one was leaving the Midwest! LOL

Point is, the "West" was not thought of as a single coherent cultural region per se (and it still isn't today). Rather, it was just considered the largely unsettled half of the country different in many ways from the "East."

Most of those early cattle barons were former Confederate soldiers, and what the nickname ("Where the West Begins") really was intended to impart was that Ft. Worth was a Boom Town entryway to a new part of the larger South itself. One of new opportunities and all...the "Western South" if you will (to use that term again!)... as distinguished from the "Old South" of cotton plantation country.

Those early Ft. Worth newcomers, the overwhelming majority of whom were migrants from the southeast looking to get a new start, brought with them their basic culture and folkways and, being in a former sister Confederate state, NEVER thought of themselves as being out of the South per se. In fact, some records, and ads and such in early newspapers will often have references to something like "The Dixie Cattle Company" or whatever! LOL

I have rambled enough in one post, I think!

Last edited by TexasReb; 10-19-2007 at 05:54 PM..
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Old 10-20-2007, 11:26 PM
 
Location: In God
3,073 posts, read 11,543,097 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bchris02 View Post

Texas - I would say anything east of I-35 is southern, and anything west is southwestern. The saying is that Dallas is where the East ends and Ft. Worth is where the West begins.
No, because you have places west of I-35 that are without a doubt Southern. Such as Killeen, a very black city with a much much smaller Hispanic population.
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Old 10-21-2007, 02:05 AM
 
158 posts, read 444,877 times
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That unwarrented saying people throw around, "The further South you go in Florida, the more North you get, huh huh huh huh!," is about as absurd as **** on a bull! It is true in a sense if, as you're traveling South through all the metropolitan cities and much of the coastal sprawl and cities. However, if you travel the length of the Florida peninsula from the Florida-Georgia border to the southern end of the Everglades, only traveling the rural counties, areas, and towns, i.e. off the beaten path, you will experience strong Southern cultures and accents all the way down without it breaking one single stride! All of Central and South Florida cannot be based solely on modern Orlando, West Palm Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Ft. Myers, and Miami, plus a few others! In fact all of these cities used to be as Southern as any in the South. They've since lost most of it or have had it considerably watered down over the past several decades. But the heartland of Central and South Florida are as Southern as ever! Statements like the afore mentioned one is spoken of out of ignorance. Now you have had it explained to you. So if you can no longer blame ignorance for believing and spouting such nonsense! HOORAY FOR DIXIE!
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Old 10-21-2007, 09:10 PM
 
158 posts, read 444,877 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TexasReb View Post
Related to the topic of Tejanos which Miss BlueSkies brought up, one thing that has not been mentioned -- unless I missed it somewhere -- ala' objective/subjective criterion for what makes the South the South, is racial/ethnic demographics. Historically, it is the black/white duality that characterized the South. And perhaps a good reason why states like Texas and Florida have become a bit debatable as to "Southern" status, is because of the heavy migration of hispanics in the former and Latin in the later (pardon the alliterative here! LOL). In Texas, at least, it is a relatively recent phenomenon. At the time of the WBTS, one-third of the population was black. Although dropping a bit over the years, this held fairly constant up until the past several decades. Today, blacks in Texas are the minority minority. And hispanics, at least in my own experience, do not generally consider themselves Southerners in the same way that many anglo and black Texans do.

Now, in East Texas, that "traditional South" of black and white is still there and very evident. In south and far west Texas, forget it.
Again, I must state that Hispanics are not a race! Hispanics and the broader term Latinos do not constitute a single race any more than Anglos do. Black and White Americans who speak English as a first language are all Anglo Americans. True Anglos are White, but because the English language extended beyond White to Black Americans, they too, by cultures and language are technically Anglo Americans. The same applies to Latin Americans. True Latins (Ancient Romans per say) are White just as Anglos are White. The Blacks in Latin America learned Latin languages (Spanish, Portuguese, and French) and picked up Latin cultures and by extension are technically Latinos as well. But just as Anglo is not a race, neither is Latino, nor Hispanic for that matter. I've seen both White and Black Latin Americans. The ones we see that seem to be "not quite White," or "not quite Black," are exactly that. They're Mixed (Mulatto) Latin Americans. For some reason or other, people conjur up that Mixed Latin American image as if it's the true "Latino look." That's ridiculous. Latino is not a race or a look. It's cultures, dialects, and such that have developed from Latin languages.
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Old 10-22-2007, 07:36 AM
 
10,238 posts, read 19,512,599 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by florida southerner 3 View Post
Again, I must state that Hispanics are not a race! Hispanics and the broader term Latinos do not constitute a single race any more than Anglos do. Black and White Americans who speak English as a first language are all Anglo Americans. True Anglos are White, but because the English language extended beyond White to Black Americans, they too, by cultures and language are technically Anglo Americans. The same applies to Latin Americans. True Latins (Ancient Romans per say) are White just as Anglos are White. The Blacks in Latin America learned Latin languages (Spanish, Portuguese, and French) and picked up Latin cultures and by extension are technically Latinos as well. But just as Anglo is not a race, neither is Latino, nor Hispanic for that matter. I've seen both White and Black Latin Americans. The ones we see that seem to be "not quite White," or "not quite Black," are exactly that. They're Mixed (Mulatto) Latin Americans. For some reason or other, people conjur up that Mixed Latin American image as if it's the true "Latino look." That's ridiculous. Latino is not a race or a look. It's cultures, dialects, and such that have developed from Latin languages.
I don't know that I referred to hispanics as a race. However, I think the point I was making was understood by all. That is, that it is the black/white duality which is most associated with the South. And that those from Mexico and Latin America do not generally think of themselves as "Southerners" in the same way the former do...even if native born. That at least has been my experience which, granted, are always subjective.
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Old 10-22-2007, 11:41 AM
 
Location: Memphis
506 posts, read 1,463,662 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TexasReb View Post

Several years ago I was in the metroplex on some minor business, and got a motel room in Irving, near the DFW airport. The clerk was a black lady and her accent was thick as mine is (which is, I admit, VERY thick!), and, even before I showed her my ID, she said to me "You must be from Texas."

Wellll, yeah.. I mean, weren't we IN Texas? I laughed a bit and asked what clued her in. She said, "baby, cos you don't sound like you are from around here."
This is one thing that is different. In Texas, people may actually comment on your accent. In the south, we don't have to comment. Also, Texas has a HUGE population, and lots of urban areas, which generally means you lose some of your culture influences.

One thing I've noticed about Texas is this: although East Texas has similar characteristics to the south, the rest of the state does not. A lot of it has influences similar to the West like cowboys, chili cookoffs, ranches, etc. which are not found in the South.

Also small things like sweet tea and BBQ (in the deep south, it is always implied that bbq is pork bbq, which is not the case in Texas). Take a look at this map, in my opinion, this is exactly modern day south where sweet tea is enjoyed:


I'm sure a few of these things have been pointed out, but I hope I didn't offend you.
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