Does Pennsylvania border a southern state? (Pittsburgh, York: home, legal, agriculture)

[Bobilee]

Originally Posted by ILikeMike91

As a Canadian I find west Virginia culturally somewhat southern, but it really is just Appalachian.

"Appalachian" in this context is meaningless, there is no applicable "Appalachian" culture, it is a false concept. People use this term as an "out" when they don't want to say "Southern". Another alternative to saying "southern" is "country", which is equally meaningless.

Anthropological research shows that supposed Appalachian cultural characteristics don't exist, or are restricted to very small and highly specific locations within the region.

In short, it is difficult to conceive of an accurate statement of “culture” for some 25 million people living in 13 states, especially given a high annual turnover rate in the population through in- and out-migration. This is not to say local cultures do not exist, particularly in rural Appalachia, but they are usually belief and behavior sets tied to specific places and are not descriptive of everyone in the region.

The Uses and Misuses of Appalachian Culture

Originally Posted by muppethammer26

Historically, none of the states bordering Pennsylvania are considered southern. I think the Mason-Dixon Line as a border has always been irrelevant since Maryland and West Virginia are similar to Pennsylvania.

West Virginia is not similar to Pennsylvania. I remember a statement you made in another thread that you had never been to West Virginia. In a survey several years ago the religion research group Barna: Cities conducted a survey on the most "Bible Minded" cities in the US. The Charleston-Huntington WV area came in with the Top Ten. And where was the "Paris of Appalachia"? No. 73 out of 96. There are plenty of other significant ways in which WV is not at all similar to PA, but this will do for the moment.

America’s Most and Least Bible-Minded Cities

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by toobusytoday

Delaware a Southern State? Since when? Lower Delaware had slaves before the civil war but they did NOT secede from the Union and it had an active underground railroad. It certainly is not a Southern state today. Lower Delaware may be rural but it is not and never has been considered Southern. | Delaware History: The state's role in the Civil War

Southern Delaware was absolutely considered Upper South. It was another one of those states, like Maryland and Missouri, which had to be more or less coerced into remaining with the Union.

It has a history of Jim Crow laws and was one of those states which had to be dragged into the 20th Century after Brown v. Board of Education.

[toobusytoday]

Originally Posted by North Beach Person

Southern Delaware was absolutely considered Upper South. It was another one of those states, like Maryland and Missouri, which had to be more or less coerced into remaining with the Union.

It has a history of Jim Crow laws and was one of those states which had to be dragged into the 20th Century after Brown v. Board of Education.

It's lower Delaware, not Southern Delaware. Yes there were slaves and there were people that went to fight for the South, but the STATE was at best a border state, not a Southern state. Although the OP specifically asked us to do his poll and,

Vote based on today, not historically.

, I think we all agree that today it is absolutely not a Southern State. I don't think there's any reason to think it was ever one. You can't really take one tiny county (there are only three in the whole state) and say that because that one county was somewhat pro-Confederate, the whole state should be considered Southern.

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by toobusytoday

It's lower Delaware, not Southern Delaware. Yes there were slaves and there were people that went to fight for the South, but the STATE was at best a border state, not a Southern state.

Why do you think "border state" and "southern" are mutually exclusive? What academic source have you found to support this?

Historians, writers, and observers have tried to define the Border South and its relationship to the rest of the South. Historian William Freehling, for example, considers the border the "quasi South," "a world between," and sees Richmond as "less southern" than Charleston. The true South, it seems, can only be found in the plantation black belt in the Lower South where slavery dominated, secession sentiment boiled, and the humid, jungle-like climate welcomed the "slave drain" from Virginia in the 1850s. The idea that the Border South was not Southern, as tempting as it might be, conveniently sets aside much of what we know about the region in order to give clarity to the sectional split not does it adequately represent the complexity of life on the border. The idea of a border depends in large measure on a "closed" South, one sealed by a definitive geography or polity. Along the border we quickly discover that the South was not closed but permeable, not sealed airtight but punctured with openings.

If the sectional crisis helped define the Border South and the Civil War tested its loyalties, the region's role in the struggles over civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s cast it again as definitively Southern and at the same time set apart from the Lower South. The litigation of cases to the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education included four cases from the Border region out of the five total cases. The NAACP's strategy targeted the Border South and the cases emerged from the District of Columbia, Virginia, Kansas, Delaware, and South Carolina.

The Border South | Southern Spaces

[Pine to Vine]

Originally Posted by toobusytoday

It's lower Delaware, not Southern Delaware. Yes there were slaves and there were people that went to fight for the South, but the STATE was at best a border state, not a Southern state. Although the OP specifically asked us to do his poll and, , I think we all agree that today it is absolutely not a Southern State. I don't think there's any reason to think it was ever one. You can't really take one tiny county (there are only three in the whole state) and say that because that one county was somewhat pro-Confederate, the whole state should be considered Southern.

You'll find, if you are not already aware, that the southernness of DE and even moreso MD, are hobby horses BY likes too ride. He seems to be fixated on history, to a large pat, and chooses to ignore even OP's requests:

Originally Posted by Borntoolate85

Vote based on today, not historically.6.html[/url]

As natives of lower DE, you and I probably have better finger on the pulse of not only today's character of the area (the actually OP of this thread), but what we learned about it on the ground when growing up there.

If Bajan wants to think Delaware is the land of grit-eating, y'all saying', freeway-driving, confederate-flag-flying, GOP-voting, magnolia-shaded, slave-history-denying, Tea-Party-rallying, same-sex-marrying-preventing, bless-her-heart-saying, pick-up-driving, gun-tottin', Dixie-singing, julep-drinking, Baptist-worshiping South, what harm does it cause, really?

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by Pine to Vine

You'll find, if you are not already aware, that the southernness of DE and even moreso MD, are hobby horses BY likes too ride. He seems to be fixated on history, to a large pat, and chooses to ignore even OP's requests

I'm not fixated on history. If the claim is made that it was historically never a southern state, then I would expect a citation to support that claim.

Originally Posted by Pine to Vine

If Bajan wants to think Delaware is the land of grit-eating, y'all saying', freeway-driving, confederate-flag-flying, GOP-voting, magnolia-shaded, slave-history-denying, Tea-Party-rallying, same-sex-marrying-preventing, bless-her-heart-saying, pick-up-driving, gun-tottin', Dixie-singing, julep-drinking, Baptist-worshiping South, what harm does it cause, really?

This is ignorant beyond belief. I bet you didn't even read the source I posted.

C-D, at least in some forums, has a very strong liberal bent, and many people can't really get down with the idea of having anything to do with anything southern. The fact that the South as a region was always heterogeneous--with Catholics in Maryland and Louisiana, Episcopalians in Virginia and certain parts of the Carolinas, tobacco culture in the Upper South, rice culture in the Carolinas, and cotton in culture in the Delta, more liberal in some parts, more conservative in others--completely escapes them. Each part of the South was different, and consequently had its own history, but it was ultimately all southern. No number of threads can simply wash away the historical record.

So the question before us is now whether a state can "de-southernize." I don't believe that. But apparently, some people won't even believe these states were EVER southern, notwithstanding five million sources that ever state they were. It's as if the United States was never even in existence until 1960 or whatever year people on here were born.

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by Pine to Vine

If Bajan wants to think Delaware is the land of grit-eating, y'all saying', freeway-driving, confederate-flag-flying, GOP-voting, magnolia-shaded, slave-history-denying, Tea-Party-rallying, same-sex-marrying-preventing, bless-her-heart-saying, pick-up-driving, gun-tottin', Dixie-singing, julep-drinking, Baptist-worshiping South, what harm does it cause, really?

Honestly, how is this any different from telling a Black person they aren't "Black" because they aren't a...

Knock out game playin', baby mama makin', shuckin, jivin' and fakin', convenience store takin', dance floor gyratin'

...kind of person?

Since most of the posters here are White, I suspect that there are those here who view the South as containing "the Wrong Kind of White People" as opposed to "The Right Kind of White People," who are found in places like Cambridge, MA, which is sort of a Holy Grail of SWPL culture in America. I mean, your post strongly suggests this, as you choose things that are really only characteristic of certain segments of Southern society and then apply that to the region as a whole.

[hobbesdj]

Lol I see Bajan Yankee is still beating his head against the wall!

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by hobbesdj

Lol I see Bajan Yankee is still beating his head against the wall!

Hobbes! Glad to see you, buddy. Remember when I asked you for that source supporting your assertion that Robert E. Lee Park in Baltimore was named thusly because of southerners who settled in the area? Where is it? I hope you didn't think I forgot. You said you were a trained historian, and as you know, making a historical claim without providing a source is intellectually dishonest. I'd hate to believe you simply lied and fabricated a story for the sake of argument.

Hopefully, you don't ignore this request along with the multiple others I've made. If you need me to provide the direct quote, I can do so...again.

[Pine to Vine]

Originally Posted by hobbesdj

Lol I see Bajan Yankee is still beating his head against the wall!

And working with inexplicably passionate assertions about posters' backgrounds and their thought processes.

I'll leave it at that.