What is the true Divide Line between the North and the South? (house, military)

[KodeBlue]

Originally Posted by manitopiaaa

I'm saying that defining the South based on its cultural boundaries in 1865 makes no sense, since cultures change (both Alexandria's and the South's).

Alexandria identified with the South in 1865 and no longer does. So even though Southern culture has also changed, it hasn't changed fast enough that Alexandrians feel a connection or affinity.

Also, there's a lot of double standards in this thread. People claiming Virginia is Southern because of history (Civil War) also claiming West Virginia is Southern because of culture (ignoring the Civil War) and Florida is also Southern because of geography. Pick a criterion and stick to it otherwise the obvious takeaway is that there is no concept of the South beyond whatever makes your region the biggest.

Alexandria has changed, I agree to but it just means that the southern city is evolving. The city isn't any less southern. Most southern cities are currently changing. Florida, Virginia, West Virginia are all southern states regardless of how fast or how much they're changing. Southern cities/states are afforded the opportunity to change the same way cities/states in other regions have.

[eddie gein]

Originally Posted by jennifat

Exactly – it's all relative. One of my aunts (via marriage to my uncle) is from Muskogee, Oklahoma, but she's lived in Minnesota for 40 years. To my ears, she still has a thick-as-molasses Southern accent. But people from the Deep South probably wouldn't even perceive her (or anyone in Oklahoma for that matter) as a Southerner. A lot of people on CD still argue that Oklahoma isn't even remotely Southern which is mind-boggling to me, personally.

Just a brief follow up on your comments...

I live in Oklahoma and it's interesting. We sort of have our own accent. It isn't really "southern" per se' but it does sound kind of hickish. The point being is that here in Oklahoma if I hear a true southern type accent I really notice it.

For instance, Reba McIntire has a southern (Texas) accent and she is from SE Oklahoma. She talks way more southern than the typical Okie.

OTOH we have in western Oklahoma a pretty large contingent of Mennonites who have lived here all their lives but they sound much more like they are from Nebraska or someplace in the northern plains.

Overall I'd say Oklahoma is for the most part a "watered down" southern with the NW part of the state being more like Kansas. The SW part of the state is pretty much the same is west Texas.

The interesting thing about Oklahoma in this discussion is that when they ruled that there could be no slavery above the 36-30 parallel (the line that runs at the bottom of the state of Missouri and the bottom of the Oklahoma panhandle...for the most part above that line is the part of Oklahoma that approximates Kansas to a great degree.

[908Boi]

Originally Posted by manitopiaaa

And I live there now and follow city politics closely. No jurisdiction has purged its racist history more than Alexandria in recent years. My neighborhood's elementary school and high school are both being renamed and any Confederate historical marker has been removed. Culturally, Alexandria hasn't been culturally Southern for a while (ever since the liberal suburban DC influx). But now it's the historical links that are also being severed.

So I'm not sure under what basis Alexandria could still be considered Southern. I'm sure the 18% who voted Trump still have an affinity for the South. But even those are mostly irreligious upscale right-wingers who voted on taxes versus cultural issues.

The fact that you associate voting Trump with a Southern affinity says a lot lol. Alexandria, and Virginia as a whole, is the South.

[lammius]

Originally Posted by manitopiaaa

And I live there now and follow city politics closely. No jurisdiction has purged its racist history more than Alexandria in recent years. My neighborhood's elementary school and high school are both being renamed and any Confederate historical marker has been removed. Culturally, Alexandria hasn't been culturally Southern for a while (ever since the liberal suburban DC influx). But now it's the historical links that are also being severed.

So I'm not sure under what basis Alexandria could still be considered Southern. I'm sure the 18% who voted Trump still have an affinity for the South. But even those are mostly irreligious upscale right-wingers who voted on taxes versus cultural issues.

Cultures (including southern cultures) are always changing. Many cities in Virginia have wanted to get rid of Confederate monuments and stuff for decades, but had been unable to due to state laws that were only repealed recently (in 2020, I think). Norfolk and Portsmouth have removed their monuments now. New Orleans did the same, I believe. That doesn't mean they're no longer southern cities (they very much are). Being "anti-confederate" in the 21st century doesn't make someone or someplace not southern. It makes a person or a place modern.

[Studying Okie]

Originally Posted by manitopiaaa

I grew up in Tulsa, OK and never felt Southern. It felt Bible Belt and Southwest/Great Plains (similar to Dallas and Oklahoma City). You didn't get to the Southerness unless you were in the extreme Southeast where the Ozarks take shape, but only like 5% of Oklahomans live there.

YMMV, but I saw plenty of Southern culture throughout the state growing up. Although Eastern Oklahoma past Tulsa is the only part of the state that really is the Southeastern United States in terms of topography and climate.

Originally Posted by eddie gein

I live in Oklahoma and it's interesting. We sort of have our own accent. It isn't really "southern" per se' but it does sound kind of hickish. The point being is that here in Oklahoma if I hear a true southern type accent I really notice it.

For instance, Reba McIntire has a southern (Texas) accent and she is from SE Oklahoma. She talks way more southern than the typical Okie.

There's absolutely a wide variance in accents within Oklahoma, but I disagree that true Southern accents don't exist in Oklahoma.


Oklahoma has plenty of Inland Southern speakers south of OKC and Tulsa, including Reba, which is not the same Southern accent as is common throughout the Deep South. I don't think it makes it any less Southern, however.


One could spend all their time in Edmond and not hear anyone with a Southern accent, but you can't miss the Southern accents fifty miles south, deep in the country.



But the blending of accents you're talking about in places like OKC and Tulsa is spot on. It's often either a Midland accent or an Inland Southern accent that employs a hypercorrected [ai] diphthong.


I don't think linguistic research like the studies by Labov or the map by Aschmann have done Oklahoma's speech patterns justice; there's so much more nuance here because of the mixed early demographic history of Oklahoma. The intermingling of Midland speakers from the Midwest who settled Northwest and North Central Oklahoma and the Inland and Lowland Southern speakers who settled Southern and Eastern Oklahoma has led to some funky and interesting accents today. Additionally, I do think that there's a strong correlation between perceived social class and whether or not you speak with a Midland or Southern accent in Oklahoma; but, I rarely see this acknowledged.

[averysgore]

Potomac River -> US 50 -> Ohio River

[eddie gein]

Originally Posted by Studying Okie

There's absolutely a wide variance in accents within Oklahoma, but I disagree that true Southern accents don't exist in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma has plenty of Inland Southern speakers south of OKC and Tulsa, including Reba, which is not the same Southern accent as is common throughout the Deep South. I don't think it makes it any less Southern, however.


One could spend all their time in Edmond and not hear anyone with a Southern accent, but you can't miss the Southern accents fifty miles south, deep in the country.

Never meant to imply that there weren't southern accents in our state. What I said is that if you hear a strong southern accent you notice it as being so. And as you say, Reba's accent is more Texas sounding southern than "deep south" sounding. But a really southern type accent stands out.

[Mutiny77]

Originally Posted by manitopiaaa

And if "Southern" is a cultural signifier, then that means we have to ask ourselves a question: Is culture stagnant? If not, then why would we lock in the South as to where it was culturally in 1865?

Folks in Charleston and throughout SC in 2015 might have an answer for that. Or perhaps the citizens of New Orleans and the state of Alabama that same year. Last year both Richmond and Charleston, as well as the state of Mississippi, provided more responses to your question. Oh and the guys that hosted that lawn party in Charlottesville a few years back...very fine people too I heard. The city leadership of Birmingham and Memphis clashed with state government officials a couple of years ago concerning some 1865-era stuff, and I heard NASCAR and Dollie Parton made some people mad too.

[Veritas Vincit]

Originally Posted by KodeBlue

Alexandria has changed, I agree to but it just means that the southern city is evolving. The city isn't any less southern. Most southern cities are currently changing. Florida, Virginia, West Virginia are all southern states regardless of how fast or how much they're changing. Southern cities/states are afforded the opportunity to change the same way cities/states in other regions have.

It doesn't really make sense if you consider that the change in Alexandria (and all the communities around it) is not due to generational change or some kind of low key long term cultural shift but simply people from other areas moving in. Alexandria, like Arlington and much of Fairfax County, is simply a location dominated by transplants and immigrants.



Not only is it not Southern, it's not any particular culture at all other than a most generic form of "United States-arian" or whatever you want to call it.

[murksiderock]

Ah, City Data's favorite topic, who is and isn't "the South"...

Originally Posted by jennifat

I think it's truly relative depending on one's perspective.

One of the best posts in here...

Coming from Carolina, you start seeing "northern-ish" tendencies in Urban Virginia---->gradually in Tidewater/Hampton Roads, a slight ramp up in Central Virginia/Richmond, and a more significant ramp up in Northern Virginia/DC. Over the years I've had people from many different places tell me Virginia isn't the South, first hearing this way back in 2002-03 by people from Memphis. People's perception weighs heavily into what they deem southern or not, as as time went on I've heard from people all over the country who didn't view Virginia as southern, "Virginia" mostly meaning the three urban areas where 75% of Virginians live because I dont think there's any debate that most of the rest of Virginia is southern...

The problem people get into with trying to classify Virginians is they want it to be one way or the other and it just isn't like that. It can be a bit of both, with the entirety of VA obviously historically rooted in the South. But contemporary urban Virginia runs the gamut of opinions, literally. I've witnessed it living and interacting in all three of the urban areas...

Originally Posted by TheseGoTo11

Prince William County, VA, about 30 miles from DC, used to have a lot more Southern accents, and about 20 years ago I'd say the Fairfax/Prince William line was sort of a boundary. But I'd agree now it's the Rappahannock. The demographics change quickly south of Stafford County. Northern Kentucky feels way more Southern than Northern VA so the Ohio probably works as a line west of the mountains.

One thing that's changed overall is the reduction of Southern accents. I used to go to Charlotte, Charleston SC, Richmond, and New Orleans and people would ask where I was from in the North. Now large parts of those cities have under 30s with no discernable Southern accents. A friend moved to Nashville, his kids were born there, and they have no accent whatsoever. Another friend is from Birmingham, AL and also has no accent. Increasingly I find that in the Metro parts of the South, the only way I know I'm in the South is the haphazard urban planning, chain restaurants, fashion - dudes with golf shirts tucked into khakis, certain trees, brick architecture, or other markers like that. Pedal pubs/party bikes too, Southern sorority girls love those things.

There is no such thing as "no accent"...

Originally Posted by P Larsen

I think answers may also vary by race and roots, shall we say: for people deeply rooted in a place, the advent of a significant number of transplants may change the cultural complexion and feel of a place for the transplants more than the folks whose culture is deeply rooted there.

There have always been regional culture blended zones in the USA, but migration has intensified that in other ways.

This is also a highly intelligent post...

Originally Posted by citylove101

I voted other. To me, the difference between North and South is very simple. The South are the former slave states. End of story. Even the border states that didn't secede carry the scars and reminders of their slave and later, Jim Crow, pasts. That includes everything from HBCUs to their (generally) very conservative political views today.

To argue that the day-to-day cultural differences in, say, Delaware, Missouri, and Florida, means that they aren't southern simply shows a willingness to go with stereotypes of the south (like it's all only sweet iced tea and Baptist revival meetings) instead of acknowledging their wide cultural diversity. But the overriding commonality, despite all the differences, is still the history and long influence of black chattel slavery.

The problem with this, in one black man's opinion, is the entire United States has a legacy of Jim Crow-esque treatment and "regulating" of African descendants, so calling places who practiced chattel slavery the South sounds good on its face but doesn't hold to me...

Overall I'm of the opinion that there are only a relative few areas solidly and completely in and of the South, and there are plenty of areas along the South's fringes that 'might be, probably are' southern, but are typical of bordwr regions as much as strictly southern...