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Old 08-20-2014, 04:07 PM
 
622 posts, read 941,321 times
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I think people should use the most common definition:

Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, District of Columbia

There are hundreds of different definitions of the Northeast, but this one is the most common version.
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Old 08-20-2014, 04:09 PM
 
12,883 posts, read 13,882,867 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer View Post
There is a nearly continuous band of concentrated wealth that includes hundreds of zip codes and suburbs stretching for more than 450 miles from Northern Virginia to the northern part of the Boston metro area. It is not just a few billionaires we're talking about here, but widespread affluence. Nowhere else in the U.S. has anything of this scale or magnitude. And yes, it hasn't escaped the notice of those of us who have been paying attention.
Which is truly great, I'm honestly proud to live in the middle of that, but why does that mean the whole area is northeastern? Again - big cities... important cities... concentrated wealth in a rather dense, urban area. It is not surprising. It makes perfect sense. What doesn't make sense is equating wealth with the northeast because wealth like that exists elsewhere, maybe not on the same scale, but it's also hard to find density like you'd find in NJ, for example, anywhere else on such a large scale so it might not even be possible to find wealth exactly like BosWash elsewhere on such a large scale. California also has large concentrations of wealth in pockets (SF Bay Area), but it is obviously not northeastern.
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Old 08-20-2014, 04:21 PM
 
Location: East Coast of the United States
27,260 posts, read 28,317,220 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JerseyGirl415 View Post
Which is truly great, I'm honestly proud to live in the middle of that, but why does that mean the whole area is northeastern? Again - big cities... important cities... concentrated wealth in a rather dense, urban area. It is not surprising. It makes perfect sense. What doesn't make sense is equating wealth with the northeast because wealth like that exists elsewhere, maybe not on the same scale, but it's also hard to find density like you'd find in NJ, for example, anywhere else on such a large scale so it might not even be possible to find wealth exactly like BosWash elsewhere on such a large scale. California also has large concentrations of wealth in pockets (SF Bay Area), but it is obviously not northeastern.
The point is there is no such band of concentrated wealth that connects the Washington DC area to any other region except for the northeast.
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Old 08-20-2014, 04:27 PM
 
Location: The City
22,379 posts, read 38,686,087 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer View Post
The point is there is no such band of concentrated wealth that connects the Washington DC area to any other region except for the northeast.
though the Philly and NYC metros connect directly in this sense yet retain separate identities and regions

The megalopolis yes, not sure on all the others

DC IMHO even among the corridor cities is the most different or unique actually
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Old 08-20-2014, 04:28 PM
 
Location: Seymour, CT
3,639 posts, read 3,313,386 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer View Post
The point is there is no such band of concentrated wealth that connects the Washington DC area to any other region except for the northeast.
You're still concentrating far too much on the relative wealth of the immediate surroundings and then moving the already established lines as a result.

JerseyGirls point is that you can't say because place A is as wealthy as place B then both places are of the same region. They are two different regions that happen to have cities with wealth... the discussion of regions and wealth are not interchangeable... they are separate points!
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Old 08-20-2014, 06:29 PM
 
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Opera is more popular in Chevy Chase than it is in Cheektowaga. Bowling is more popular in Cheekowaga than it is in Chevy Chase.

Therefore Chevy Chase is Northeastern and Cheektowaga isn't.
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Old 08-20-2014, 09:41 PM
 
12,883 posts, read 13,882,867 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer View Post
The point is there is no such band of concentrated wealth that connects the Washington DC area to any other region except for the northeast.
I understand what you're saying. I just disagree that wealth in that sense is a defining northeastern quality.

There are probably no pockets of wealth similar below DC that would continue the line for DC because there is a lack of large metros until you hit NC. I personally would say that you don't hit a large metro in the south similar to Philly, Boston, NYC, and DC until Atlanta.
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Old 08-20-2014, 10:36 PM
 
Location: N/A
1,359 posts, read 3,707,003 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee View Post
John Waters and Reginald Lewis are a bit different from Aunt Jane (who may or may not exist given the fantastic imagination of C-D posters). These are real Baltimoreans who grew up in Baltimore during the era we're discussing. And they describe it as a southern city during that time, and so do many Baltimore Sun articles. I know you want to dismiss it simply as "opinion," but that's the consensus historical view of the city.

As mentioned upthread, Maryland was a founding member of both the Southern Legislative Conference and the Southern Governors Association. And since the majority of the state resided in Baltimore and the DC suburbs back then (just as it does now), you can't write it off as a Southern Maryland thing.
(Sorry for the late response.)

And it moved to the Eastern CSG (Council of State Governments) from the Southern CSG a few years precisely because of its lack of similarities from the South. Remember, my entire argument was that Maryland shares more in common with the Northeast than it does with the South today.

As for opinions, here's some from local elected officials (who should in theory know there jurisdiction more than anyone:

"Maryland in its policy decisions and economy has gotten more in line with New England and the Middle Atlantic states than it is with the Southern states. We've kind of moved from an agricultural, tobacco-based economy to a research, educated economy. It's just a natural transition for us to go in that direction."
- State House Speaker Michael Busch

"I just don't think we're as Southern as people used to think,"
- State Sen. Catherine Pugh, a Baltimore Democrat



Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee View Post
Dude, we've already blown this argument to smithereens a thousand times already. Read the whole thread before raising the same arguments over and over again. There is a difference between having a slave economy--with 100,000 plus slaves--and having 1 slave in history like Massachusetts. Slavery was a moribund institution in the Northeast by 1830 and the slave population in northern states was never large in the first place. That's a critical distinction between northern and southern states.

I said how Maryland got a large Black population. Maryland had (and has) a much higher percentage of Blacks than any northern state because it was a slave state. Until the Great Migration, it had a larger Black population than any state above the Mason-Dixon Line or the Ohio River (btw, the mention of the MDL is not an excuse to jump into a discussion about its relevance or lack thereof).
Actually New Jersey had some slaves past 1830, although they were termed (mandatory) "apprenticeships." Slavery was never really common in Northern and Western MD or (obviously) West Virginia (which is a whole So it's not really a black and white issue, which is why I brought up Newport, RI. In any case, there were significant distinctions between MD, DE, and MO and the other slave states as well:

Total slave population and percentage of blacks enslaved in the slave states on the eve of the Civil War (1860)

Alabama - 435,080, 99.3.%
Arkansas - 111,115, 99.6%
Delaware - 1,798, 8.2%
Florida - 61,745, 98.7%
Georgia - 462,198, 99.3%
Kentucky - 225,483, 95.6%
Louisiana - 331,726, 94.7%
Maryland - 87,189, 51%
Mississippi - 436,631, 99.8%
Missouri - 114,931, 97%
North Carolina - 331,059, 91.5%
South Carolina - 402,406, 97.6%
Tennessee - 275,719, 97.6%
Texas - 182,566, 99.6%
Virginia - 490,865, 89.5%

The difference between Maryland (and Delaware) and it's southern neighbor, Virginia, is most telling. As a black in Maryland there was a 50-50 chance you were free, and in Delaware that would most likely be the case. That's a far cry from any other slave state.

Just to be clear, I'm not downplaying slavery in Maryland (or DE), I'm just pointing out that it's not as clear cut as it's being portrayed. I've long conceded that slavery in Maryland and Delaware (and MO) is a significant historical trait that they share with the South.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee View Post
I said how Maryland got a large Black population. Maryland had (and has) a much higher percentage of Blacks than any northern state because it was a slave state. Until the Great Migration, it had a larger Black population than any state above the Mason-Dixon Line or the Ohio River (btw, the mention of the MDL is not an excuse to jump into a discussion about its relevance or lack thereof).
True, my mistake, although the fact that Baltimore was only 15% black at the time (far lower than any major Southern city) is still relevant to the topic at hand.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee View Post
Baltimore didn't industrialize on the same scale as Philadelphia and Boston. That's a big reason why it's so much smaller. It's also a big reason why Baltimore does not have the same percentages of White Catholics as its neighbors to the north.
It may not have industrialized at exactly the same scale, but it clearly matched the Northern industrialization pattern. The cities in the North (by "North" I'm including the entire Rust Belt stretching to Milwaukee) weren't carbon copies of each other.

In any case, in the same breath you could say that no major Southern city industrialized to the scale of Baltimore, and the difference between Baltimore and Philadelphia/Boston was far, far less than the difference between Atlanta, Dallas, Richmond, New Orleans, etc.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee View Post
Virtually every major metro in the Northeast has a much higher Italian/Irish percentage than Baltimore (the MSA is only 6.5% Italian). Here is Italian % by MSA.
It's not just "at the lower end of the scale." It's significantly below every other Northeastern metro area.
Which isn't surprising at all. To me I would expect that the southernmost city in the North would have the lowest percentage of Italians, especially when they're somewhat "drowned out" by the large black population. Baltimore also has significantly more ethnic Europeans than most Southern cities as well.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee View Post
Percentage and absolute number matter. In Philadelphia's case, it has a much higher percentage and a much higher absolute number than Baltimore. If you focused only on percentage, that wouldn't tell the whole story, would it? Without the numbers, you don't get a sense of the scale of these populations. The NYC metro has lots of towns with high Italian/Irish percentages because of the sheer numbers of those populations. You don't see tons of towns in the DC and Baltimore suburbs that are 25% Italian/Irish because the numbers are far less.
Yeah, I have to disagree with this. Unless you're comparing apples to apples, it's absolute numbers that don't tell the whole story.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee View Post
The majority of Catholics in Maryland are non-White (and by "Catholic" people have traditionally meant "White Ethnic"). And that makes sense given that the percentage of Italians and Irish is so low relative to Pennsylvania or New Jersey.
To me, Catholic is Catholic, and Southern states also have high minority populations but not nearly the percentage of Catholics that MD has. Also that doesn't explain the relatively large number of Jews (who are white for the most part) or low number of Baptists in DE/MD.


Overall, you present the most compelling case for excluding MD, DE, DC from the NE that I've seen. Still, the only significant fact that you've presented that ties MD et al to the South and significantly differentiates them from the Northern states is the history of slavery (and the resultant high percentage of African-American residents). In every other case where you've presented differences between MD/DE and the Northeastern, the same arguments could just as easily be flipped on their heads to show the (even larger) differences between MD/DE and the South. As I posted above, even in the realm of slavery MD (and especially DE) were different from other slave states.

While I don't believe Maryland or Delaware can truly be called "yankee" states, (I've actually been called that in NC once and was a little taken aback) I still firmly believe they share a lot more in common with the NE than the Southeast today. Obviously there are some differences between it and the rest of the Northeast (which isn't homogenous at all) that become more obvious as you get further north to New England, but the differences between MD and even VA and NC, much less states like GA, TX, and AL, are far more glaring. Personally, I refer to Maryland as "Mid-Atlantic" most often (along with NJ, DE, PA, and DC).
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Old 08-20-2014, 11:14 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,179,658 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
As I said upthread, if current trends continue in 20 years you'll see a "blue" Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Texas, with big Latino/Asian populations and large groups of white liberals without southern accents in the major urban areas. Something is going to have to change in terms of how the South is defined. If a New/Old South dynamic evolves, Maryland would fit far better into this future southern definition than it does into the Northeast. Hell, even arguably Delaware - I think last census it was the only state north of Virginia and east of Ohio which had a net increase in white migration.
Decades ago, the south was solidly Democratic.
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Old 08-21-2014, 09:45 AM
 
Location: Crooklyn, New York
31,887 posts, read 34,388,425 times
Reputation: 14966
Quote:
Originally Posted by cpterp View Post
Remember, my entire argument was that Maryland shares more in common with the Northeast than it does with the South today.
And our entire argument is that it's too different from Northeastern states to be classified as such.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cpterp View Post
Actually New Jersey had some slaves past 1830, although they were termed (mandatory) "apprenticeships."
Did you see upthread where I said that there seems to be no appreciation of scale here? Here's what I mean.

Slaves in 1840:
Maryland - 89,737
New Jersey - 674

How vital an institution is slavery to your economy with 674 slaves? Slavery was clearly vital to Maryland's economy, which is why a plurality of the state's vote went to Breckenridge in the Election of 1860.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cpterp View Post
Slavery was never really common in Northern and Western MD or (obviously) West Virginia (which is a whole So it's not really a black and white issue, which is why I brought up Newport, RI.
That's not unique to Maryland. Slavery was always larger in the areas more suitable to cotton/tobacco cultivation. In North Georgia, for example, there are some counties that register a Black population of 0% (Dawson, Fannin, Gilmer, etc.). That part of the state never had a large Black population because it was in Appalachia (similar to Western Maryland) and thus not as conducive to large scale agriculture.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cpterp View Post
The difference between Maryland (and Delaware) and it's southern neighbor, Virginia, is most telling. As a black in Maryland there was a 50-50 chance you were free, and in Delaware that would most likely be the case. That's a far cry from any other slave state.
We already discussed this upthread. After soil exhaustion in the early 19th Century, slaveholders didn't need an expensive labor force that they would be taxed on so long as their property lived (yes, they were considered "property" after all). So they turned to "term" slavery where slaves were only held in bondage during the most productive years of their lives. At the end of the term, some slaves were manumitted, but others were "sold" to other parties before their terms expired (often in Baltimore to work in factories) as indentureds (who were "free" as a matter of law).

Quote:
Originally Posted by cpterp View Post
True, my mistake, although the fact that Baltimore was only 15% black at the time (far lower than any major Southern city) is still relevant to the topic at hand.
It was also far Blacker than anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon in 1900.

Suffolk County, MA - 1.82%
Providence - 1.80%
New York County - 1.56%
Monmouth County - 7.34%
Mercer County - 4.33%
Camden County - 8.52%
Philadelphia - 3.76%
Montgomery (PA) - 2.33%
Delaware County - 9.33%
Salem County - 11.17%
New Castle - 14.78%
Cecil - 15.39%
Harford - 21.99%
Baltimore County - 14.03%
Baltimore City - 15.45%
Anne Arundel - 42.56%
Howard - 25.26%
Montgomery (MD) - 35.63%
PG County - 42.96%
Charles County - 53.56%

Just trying to focus on Baltimore City alone and ignoring everything else around it doesn't really paint an accurate portrait.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cpterp View Post
It may not have industrialized at exactly the same scale, but it clearly matched the Northern industrialization pattern. The cities in the North (by "North" I'm including the entire Rust Belt stretching to Milwaukee) weren't carbon copies of each other.
Yes, it did industrialize. The reason I brought "scale" into the equation is that the Northeast is distinct in that it industrialized earlier and to a greater degree than any other part of the country. If Baltimore had industrialized to the level of Philly or Boston, its white population would likely be considerably more ethnic, pulling its demographics closer in line to those cities.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cpterp View Post
Which isn't surprising at all. To me I would expect that the southernmost city in the North would have the lowest percentage of Italians, especially when they're somewhat "drowned out" by the large black population. Baltimore also has significantly more ethnic Europeans than most Southern cities as well.
Or you would expect that the northernmost southern city (which is what it was) would have a slightly higher Italian percentage (6.5%) than Richmond (3.6%).

Quote:
Originally Posted by cpterp View Post
Yeah, I have to disagree with this. Unless you're comparing apples to apples, it's absolute numbers that don't tell the whole story.
I don't see why both wouldn't be relevant. We use both percentages and numbers in nearly every comparison we make on C-D. It provides context. In this case, the percentage and the absolute number is significantly higher in Philadelphia, so I think that matters a lot. It's a much higher percentage on a much larger number. That means that the white ethnic community is so large that it stays distinct much longer than in other cities with lower numbers overall.

But if you insist on using percentages alone, it doesn't really help your case. 21.75% (Baltimore) is closer to 12.08% (Richmond) than it is to 32.67% (Philadelphia). And that's exactly how Baltimore feels to me. It's like taking Philadelphia and Richmond and mashing them together.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cpterp View Post
To me, Catholic is Catholic, and Southern states also have high minority populations but not nearly the percentage of Catholics that MD has. Also that doesn't explain the relatively large number of Jews (who are white for the most part) or low number of Baptists in DE/MD.
Well, Catholic is not quite Catholic. The "Catholic" Vote in Texas is not the same thing as the "Catholic" vote in Massachusetts. Those are culturally different voters.

Maryland stands out from southern states in some ways. But why does that make it northeastern when it stands out from northeastern states in important ways too? Catholics, for example, make up 4.7% of the population in the Archdiocese of Richmond (if the Archdiocese conformed to the actual definition of the Richmond MSA, as it largely does with Baltimore's, the percentage would be higher). Catholics make up 16% of the Baltimore Archdiocese, which is much higher than Richmond. But then Catholics make up 38% of the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

So again, the difference between Philadelphia and Baltimore is about as great as the difference between Baltimore and Richmond.
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