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wanted to hear from people who have recently (maybe the last year or so) left the Raleigh area to move back to Western NY...I am so conflicted and am not sure whether to seriously consider it...
wanted to hear from people who have recently (maybe the last year or so) left the Raleigh area to move back to Western NY...I am so conflicted and am not sure whether to seriously consider it...
I left Aiken, SC last autumn and moved back to NY. I'm originally from Albany, but now live in the FLX. What do you want to know?
My wife heard the other day that people that moved down south from ny are now moving back. has anybody you know (yourself included) done this? If so why? We're wondering because we've thought from time to time about moving down south but would like to know the downsides that other northerners have experienced.
I am moving back north for several reasons.
1) The biggest reason is religion. As an atheist, I am an outcast in the Deep South. Plain and simple. No, I wasn't burned at the stake, but there's no way most folks could get past that. 95% of the people who could get past were northern transplants themselves. And I'm not a militant or angry atheist either, but if someone asks me something about church then I'll be honest with them. In the Northeast, if I tell someone I'm an atheist I get the same reaction as if I were telling them that I had a burrito for lunch: who cares?
Even Christians from other parts of the country think Christians down here are crazy. They have too much political power and no one challenges them, nor has anyone EVER challenged them. Catholics can't get too out of line in NY or NJ because there's so many Jews, and neither group can get too out of line because there's just enough people who look at the world from a secular point of view that government just isn't all............churchy. Or preachy. Here, even liberals / Democrats quote scripture whenever they make a point about something.
I can completely understand how a state Supreme Court justice could get away with a Ten Commandments monument being in the courtroom down here. It doesn't even occur to people that maybe, just maybe, the Bible isn't true. Also, the high school biology textbooks have a special message in them inserted by the state that essentially says evolution is "just a theory" and creationism could be true. I can't expose my kids to that. And that's the public schools. The private schools are worse because they're all Christian schools.
2) Race / culture: Black people get along OK, yes racism (even overt racism) exists, but honestly it doesn't seem any worse (or better) than the Northeast. At least not with regards to blacks. But anyone who's not black or white is perceived as being "foreign", which down here means "stupid", "uneducated", or criminal (if you're Mexican). They're not really used to having people around them who are not white or black down here. This negative treatment came from both white people and black people.
One of the local towns is known by such nicknames as "Little Mexico" and "Little Guadalajara". Everyone, black and white, told me to stay away from this town because of all the Mexicans "taking over." Went to the Census Bureau's website, turns out the town is 6% Hispanic. Six percent!!!! Even if you factor in the undocumented immigrants and assume they make up half the population, that's 12%. Still very much a minority! It cracked me up.
3) Climate: the summer is oppressively hot. Think about the kind of heat wave that you get in NY/NJ for like 2 or 3 weeks in July, and then imagine experiencing that EVERY SINGLE DAY from late May through late September. And winters aren't nice. Most of the South isn't like Miami or even New Orleans, where it's 70 or 80 degrees in January or February. Many parts of the South are 50 degrees and rainy/cloudy throughout the winter months. The trees are still bare and the grass is still brown, but if you get an inch of snow the city practically goes into martial law. It gets just cold enough (especially at night) to remind you it's winter, but you don't get much in the way of snow cover, so the landscape is pretty ugly all winter. Don't get me started on the spring thunderstorms / tornadoes.
I enjoy and appreciate the 4 full seasons we get in the Northeast. Winter is cold and snowy, but not TOO cold and snowy (we're not Buffalo in terms of snow, but we're not Minnesota in terms of cold either. We're just right). Spring is nice, summer is amazing because there's so much to do (whoever said you stay cooped up inside all summer just like you do up north in the winter is absolutely right). Fall is great of course, and then before you know it's the holidays. Fall is the only season down south I truly like, and that's mostly because that's when the heat finally ends.
4) Government is too lax. I'm not THAT liberal, I definitely think NYC and NJ are a bit overzealous sometimes in terms of regulation, but the southern states are too loose. They don't inspect your car, guns are very easy to get (buy them at Wal-Mart with a driver's license), there's practically no protection for tenants, so landlords get away with crap they could never get away with in NYC, etc.
5) Crime. So here's the thing. A lot of people don't know this, but small to mid-sized southern cities like Birmingham, AL, Jackson, MS, and Baton Rouge, LA have homicide rates that are comparable to Newark or Baltimore. Dead serious. But here's the thing. Up north, homicides almost always involve drugs or gangs, or maybe armed robbery.
Down here, drugs and gangs exist, and people do get robbed, but compared to high-crime cities up north, it's a LOT more common for people here to get killed in ordinary, everyday conflicts like domestic disputes and bar fights. Which to me seems worse, because even if you're not involved in illegal activity, because so many people carry guns down here, one perceived sign of disrespect could mean a bullet in your head. People here kill over nothing, that's what a friend down here from D.C. told me, and he's absolutely right. The local white people just blame black people for the high crime rates, but rednecks act this way too.
I saw two rednecks get into a bar fight and one guy shot the other a few months back. Imagine a city with a homicide rate as high as Newark's, but people get killed over bar fights and domestic disputes more so than drugs or gangs. That's the South for you!
Last edited by White Wine; 09-26-2013 at 06:09 PM..
@white wine, I dont have much disagreement with your thoughts, but I'd like to offer some counterpoints...
1)The South isn't as religiously open, diverse, or tolerant, and I very much agree that that is a bad thing. Not much to say here...
2) I completely disagree with the notion that aside from blacks and whites, the Northeast is more harmonious in racial or cultural relations. That includes large cities like New York and Boston and Philly, all of which--while being fairly to highly integrated and diverse--have well documented race and cultural issues. I mean, you have people drawing swastikas on Jewish businesses in Brooklyn....further to my point, though, I've found that the same ignorance shown in the South happen just as frequently in the North, if not moreso, because there is a larger variety of people and cultures to discriminate against. People up here believe a population with 10% black (very much a minority) is a lot of black people, so that kind of neutralizes that viewpoint.
3) Weather is a mixed bag, because the same way you consider the South oppressively hot, many of us find the North unbearingly cold. It all amounts to a) what one is used to, and b) what one prefers. I have never in my life witnessed the amount of snowfall in my life that I see in New York State. Rarely saw snowfall before January or after February, or felt 30 degree highs in April and May. But I wasnt used to it. I've largely acclimated to it, but still and all, I am a warm weather person, and cant wait to return South...
4) Not much comment on government, as I can find things in any state government (like these crazy NYS taxes) that I dont enjoy...
5) Its a fact crime is worse down south, but you've exaggerated a bit. People arent dying "for nothing" any more than they do here. Its just crime is a lot more widespread, and Southerners do tend to be more aggressive and violent. By contrast, though, there is an epidemic here with domestic violence. Of course I've witnessed it before and these situations occur everywhere, but never in my life have I saw so much domestic violence! It is scary and disproportionate to the population, and you'd really have to know the 'other side' to realise just how much and out of control DV is in New York State. Crazy...
I'm not going to say a lot, but I can see both sides. I will say that speaking from the area in SC my mom and others I know are from, it does seem like domestic homicides are an issue, comparatively speaking. There have been a drive by or two. With that said, DV is probably a bigger issue than people realize throughout the U.S.
I think for some up here, a city that is 10% Black is a lot and it is decent(not high), given that the country is 13-14%. However, that is still below average and I don't think that people would say that Black folks are taking over up here, if that is really the case in regards to Hispanics in that area of the South.
@white wine, I dont have much disagreement with your thoughts, but I'd like to offer some counterpoints...
1)The South isn't as religiously open, diverse, or tolerant, and I very much agree that that is a bad thing. Not much to say here...
2) I completely disagree with the notion that aside from blacks and whites, the Northeast is more harmonious in racial or cultural relations. That includes large cities like New York and Boston and Philly, all of which--while being fairly to highly integrated and diverse--have well documented race and cultural issues. I mean, you have people drawing swastikas on Jewish businesses in Brooklyn....further to my point, though, I've found that the same ignorance shown in the South happen just as frequently in the North, if not moreso, because there is a larger variety of people and cultures to discriminate against. People up here believe a population with 10% black (very much a minority) is a lot of black people, so that kind of neutralizes that viewpoint.
Well I am a minority myself, and I see this first hand, as well as among people I've known. Never said the NE wasn't racist, as a matter of fact I openly acknowledged that the level of racism in the two regions was similar, but again, what I said was people down south have little experience being around people who aren't black or white, and often assume Hispanics, Asians, Arabs, etc. are "foreigners" who can't speak English. Sure New Yorkers may be racist towards those groups for other reasons, but at the very least they acknowledge their ability to speak and learn a language. Met a lot of southerners who couldn't even wrap their heads around that.
I've seen and experienced this many times down south. Other minorities I've met who have transplanted themselves here echo those sentiments.
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3) Weather is a mixed bag, because the same way you consider the South oppressively hot, many of us find the North unbearingly cold. It all amounts to a) what one is used to, and b) what one prefers. I have never in my life witnessed the amount of snowfall in my life that I see in New York State. Rarely saw snowfall before January or after February, or felt 30 degree highs in April and May. But I wasnt used to it. I've largely acclimated to it, but still and all, I am a warm weather person, and cant wait to return South...
What can I say? We like what we like. I can't stand heat.
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4) Not much comment on government, as I can find things in any state government (like these crazy NYS taxes) that I dont enjoy...
Agreed, states here tax and regulate people through the wazoo, but as a centrist who leans left.........if I have to pick between the two evils, the slight edge goes to the NE. At least the well-funded schools here aren't teaching creationism. In practically every study of K-12 public schools, states like Alabama and Mississippi rank at or near the bottom, and Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, and sometimes New York and New Jersey rank in the top 5 or top 10. Property taxes are dirt cheap down south (I know someone who pays $800 a year for a 3br, 2 bath home), but it appears to be a classic case of getting what you pay for.
The schools suck. Period. Even in an affluent area, you're still learning science from a bunch of Christian fundies. Football, Jesus, and guns are much more valued here than education.
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5) Its a fact crime is worse down south, but you've exaggerated a bit. People arent dying "for nothing" any more than they do here. Its just crime is a lot more widespread, and Southerners do tend to be more aggressive and violent. By contrast, though, there is an epidemic here with domestic violence. Of course I've witnessed it before and these situations occur everywhere, but never in my life have I saw so much domestic violence! It is scary and disproportionate to the population, and you'd really have to know the 'other side' to realise just how much and out of control DV is in New York State. Crazy...
Never said domestic violence doesn't occur up north. What I said was that a greater share of the homicides in southern cities involves violence outside of the drug trade or other illegal activity such as gangs. That "ordinary" violence includes domestic violence, as well as things like bar fights. That's what I said.
@ck, where is your mom from again? I obviously have no grounds to du sagree with your experiences, but I am intimately familiar with SC. The Pee Dee (Dillon, Marion, Bennettsville, Florence); the Lowcountry (Myrtle Beach); the Midlands (Columbia, Orangeburg, Santee, Sumter)...I have frequented these areas and knows scores of people from/in these cities, and dv has been the least of the issues I'd witnessed. However, your comment that dv is under-acknowledged countrywide is true. However, there is an onus on it in this state, and yet it is still one the most common occurences here! Its not really possible to explain just how bad it is here...
As far as the "taking ovwr" comment, thats probably true. Many areas of the South are growing rapidly in Hispanic population; historically black or white-dominated areas of the South arent used to that, and may not be so receptive. Plus, it should be noted that there are areas of the South that are diverse and handle this well. However, when such comment is made, its likely as a joke and not to be taken literally as if the speaker truly dislikes Hispanic migration. There are plenty of examples of discriminatory statements I've heard,though; this just iisn't one of them. And again, it isn't as if Northerners of various backgrounds (but mostly whites) arent privy to discrimination against Hispanics, either...
@white wine, whoa calm down! I get what you're saying...
I have to ask where in the South are you? That is the critical missing from this conversation...
Sorry, didn't mean to come off as confrontational. I'm calm, I promise. I'm in Alabama.
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