the word YANKEE... (Charlotte: codes, assess, agricultural)
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And how do you see the attitudes of Southerners differing from persons coming from elsewhere in the country? Isn't that perhaps an unjustified generalisation? Perhaps by "attitude" you mean certain outwardly expressed manners and ways of speaking/behaving, as opposed to what I would consider to constitute attitudes, i.e.largely internal perceptions, beliefs and opinions that have a relatively enduring quality and/or are mobilised in response to specific situations and stimuli (e.g., a student who characteristically feels persecuted by his/her teachers and reacts to all teachers with hostility, even though there's no objective basis in the immediately present situation for such a response).
I'm sorry if this sounds pedantic. However, I'd like to know what you mean by "attitude".
I realize that this is a long thread and a lot to read and digest, but many posters including Ani have explained "attitude". Simply, it's not the people but the attitude some have moving here. And of course there were opposing opinions about the people that live here. Some posts have been deleted because things got personal for some posters. But to me it is an interesting and informative thread, although really long and sometimes frustrating!
Interesting what you have to say about accents. I was born in Chicago and lived there for 17 years until my parents moved to Ft. Lauderdale. Spent about 38 years there. People still ask me if I am from the midwest. Guess I never lost it. But south Florida was a big mixture of locals and transplants from all over. And it is in no way considered southern. (Central and northern Florida are). Too many different accents I guess to have any influence.
The attitude of people who move unwillingly or semi-willingly to another place can work both ways. I may have related on this thread a recent encounter I had with a BoA human resources officer from NC who had been posted to DE 6 months earlier. We were sitting at the bar in our local tavern and he was asking some questions about the location of the state fair here, which was having some big name C&W performers -- he was just noticing that in the local paper. His commentary about living in Delaware betrayed a stunning lack of understanding of the state he'd found himself living in and a complete failure to explore the place, even locally, in the past six months that he had been here. He was clearly frustrated because he had apparently believed that he and his wife were settled back in NC for good. It was clear to me that his main problem was the unhappiness of the perceived screwing by his employer and having a sense of control over his life taken away from him. Yet, he was making himself unhappier by not actively taking advantage of the things that DE has to offer (not heaven, but more than people might think, especially for the financially advantaged late middle aged set). I was slightly offended by his "attitude", even though I understood what was behind it. It certainly was a lesson to me regarding the importance of not taking on that sort of mentality or conveying it to other people.
DOCTORJEF: Here is the way it is . . . and I have posted this many times, on this thread, as well as other threads.
Southerners did not send out engraved invitations for the Great Northeastern Invasion. Yet, Charlotte has seen literally hundreds of thousands of folks move to this area. Many of them came hoping to be part of their new communities and contribute positively to their new neighborhoods. But an amazing number arrive and immediately start with the condescending attitude.
On top of that, the ridicule begins in school, with our children being called hicks and mommies screeching that they don't want their children being "influenced" by the hicks. And if you don't think this happens regularly, you must not live here and have children in schools that have been hit by a huge influx of newcomers - especially those from areas where they feel the schools were "better."
As I have repeatedly said . . . most newcomers are looking for a better life for whatever reasons. But if even 5% of those who arrive are constantly complaining, putting others down, being rude to others b/c they feel they are "better" . . . I am sure you can imagine that this is quite annoying to others.
The thing is. . . the very people who are the rudest and most annoying could read this thread and they won't see that they are part of the problem group! Why? Because they feel entitled to their attitude and they are not going to "jerked around" by the locals (wh/ is often code for people that the newcomers consider "hicks" and "rednecks.")
Let me condense a little story I have posted before. A lady from Long Island comes into a local store located in a rural area. She gets upset when there are no eggs. The manager politely explains that they are out of eggs but there will be more tomorrow. She gets more and more angry, demanding her eggs. The manager keeps saying - I am sorry, we are out of eggs - but we will have more tomorrow.
The woman finally stomps her feet and literally screams: "I don't think YOU PEOPLE get it. I live in XXX (upscale, gated, newcomers-only neighborhood) and there are no other stores around here!!!! I have company coming - and I need my eggs - and I NEED THEM NOW!!!!!"
Now, what do you do with that? She lives in XX neighborhood, so BY GOD, you ignorant people need to accommodate her. After all, isn't that what we are all here to do - accommodate the newcomers?
Or the group of women at PTA (PTO-whatever) who get angry b/c they don't feel their kids' teacher should be teaching b/c she has an accent and this is negatively affecting their children's speech. And the shrillest mom in the group blurts out - "Youse guys's bad habits is gonna rub off on our kids!!!"
I mean . . . really!!!!! Youse guys's habits is . . . ?????
It is ATTITUDE. The attitude is: "We have moved down here and you people are not up to our standards, and we demand that everyone shape up and meet our demands NOW." It is arrogant, it is ignorant and it is sure to ignite absolute disgust in the locals . . .
Well, it certainly is attitude in the cases you describe, but I wonder if the particular feelings of entitlement and ill-founded superiority are only being given a somewhat different expression when these folks migrate to the South, whereas you'd see them manifesting the same basic nastiness in their former northern homes, albeit in regard to a different set of gripes. Actually, the egg lady sounds incredibly narcissistic and infantile: I would imagine she could've pulled that stunt anywhere that her expectations were frustrated. As to the others, ignorance and prejudice go hand in hand. No doubt they'd be directing their narrow minded prejudices toward other targets in the North. However, as you say that this is only about 5% of northern migrants, I don't really see how this is directly related to being identified as a yankee ( as a loud, obnoxious yankee, certainly).
It is ATTITUDE. The attitude is: "We have moved down here and you people are not up to our standards, and we demand that everyone shape up and meet our demands NOW." It is arrogant, it is ignorant and it is sure to ignite absolute disgust in the locals . . .
An acquaintance related a story that he had with one of these over arrogant transplants.
He was running some errands one day, and realized about half a mile from his house he had a flat tire. He pulls onto a side street and starts changing the flat.
A 60 something woman in a Mercedes drives by, slows down, honks and gives him a dirty look. He just goes on with changing his flat. She floors it, and takes off down the road, but turns around, comes back, and also pulls onto the side street where he is changing the flat.
Rolls down her window and goes completely off on him, saying that she moved here for the mountains, and she lives in a new house in Biltmore Lake, and that she didn't move here to see you damn rednecks working on your trucks on the side of the road.
And yes, he is working on a truck, a brand new very nice Ford F250, and he looks nothing like a redneck, as he is a police officer with the Asheville Police Department. Fortunately for her I guess, as had I been changing a flat on my truck, she would have probably had tire iron tracks all over her Mercedes.
This guy I guess through years of dealing with the scourge of our society as a police officer allowed him to keep his cool with this out of control arrogant yankee.
Granted it only takes one bad apple (from the big apple in this case ) to reinforce the fact that yankee is often used as a derogatory term, and justifiable so.
Ugh! Those stories make me sick I wish those particular yankees would move back to where they came from. We don't need that bull**** in our fine state. They give Northerners a bad name. Luckily, most are not like that and are good people. Most transplant yankees I have met have been very good, kind people. But those few obnoxious loud mouth know-it-all types spoil it for many natives.
Asheville's story is particularly appalling. One wonders why such people are so angry. I would suspect that they really didn't want to move to NC/the South in the first place and only did so because it seemed the financially prudent thing to do, they followed their kids down, one spouse wanted to be there and the other didn't, etc. It's awful to think that some people can be so unreflective that they have to project their bile all over people who've nothing at all to do with the reason these sad people are so angry in the first place. It's interesting, though, that these stories seem to feature mouthy, obnoxious women more than men.
Asheville's story is particularly appalling. One wonders why such people are so angry. I would suspect that they really didn't want to move to NC/the South in the first place and only did so because it seemed the financially prudent thing to do, they followed their kids down, one spouse wanted to be there and the other didn't, etc. It's awful to think that some people can be so unreflective that they have to project their bile all over people who've nothing at all to do with the reason these sad people are so angry in the first place. It's interesting, though, that these stories seem to feature mouthy, obnoxious women more than men.
I could go on and on w/ stories. I have a second home in a resort that has a mixture of NC residents (Winston, Hickory, G'boro, Raleigh, Charlotte and some in between) and the rest are mostly Florida residents. The majority of folks owning homes in this resort are from Florida - and most are retirees who are from the NE originally and moved to Florida - and then like to spend their summers in our beautiful NC mountains.
I could fill up page after page about the arrogant, condescending, ill-mannered behaviors that natives endure at the hands of these folks. They are rude to the local residents outside the club - and they are rude to their neighbors, as well. The complaints are unbelievable. Of course, there are a few out of towners who are gracious folks. But the majority have an attitude that constantly surprises me, LOL.
Many have no regard for the ecological balance or respecting such things as native, indigenous plants, many which are endangered and protected. That is one of the biggest concerns with their attitude. Top off a mountain, dig up a mountain side, dump waste wherever, including on someone else's lot - reroute natural streams, dump waste into streams, strip a mountainside wh/ then causes erosion and problems for others "down the hill."
But - they will tell ya - it is THEIR land, they bought it and "you people need to come out of the ice age and get more progressive" and "You people should be grateful for our tax money" and "we are providing jobs up here" blah blah.
My son put up a hammock on our property, feet from our house (he lives there while a student) and within a half hour, the guard house gets a complaint about it causes a "visual disturbance." Yes, the Yankee up the hill felt compelled to call. Visual disturbance. How about all the trees they felled so they could have an unobstructed view of Grandfather Mountain? Losing ancient huge oaks didn't matter, cause that was "visual enhancement." You sure don't see NC residents who have homes there doing such stuff - or complaining about a blame hammock.
So yes, they are gonna be called Damn Yankees. I owned my property there b/f they moved in and it was peaceful and respectful - until we got surrounded by arrogant, entitled Yankees (or as some locals call them - Swamp Yankees - since they are Yankees by way of Florida).
Here is how I feel about it. This is the South. Our families settled here. We respect the land, we respect the other hard-working folks whose families met with a lot of hard times to settle here in the 18th Century. If it is "progressive" to condemn those folks, treat them with disrespect . . . then you better believe I will continue to resent folks who came here with dismissive and arrogant attitudes - and feel they can bully everyone (and even the land) into submission to their will. And I will call them a whole host of adjectives . . . Yankee is just one of them - and to other locals, when someone says - "what did you expect? They are YANKEES" the rest of us totally know what the speaker means. It is a descriptive term that encompasses a whole set of values and attitudes.
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) to reinforce the fact that yankee is often used as a derogatory term, and justifiable so.
I wish those particular yankees would move back to where they came from. We don't need that bull**** in our fine state. They give Northerners a bad name. Luckily, most are not like that and are good people. Most transplant yankees I have met have been very good, kind people.
