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DC is the epitome of a mid-atlantic city (along with Baltimore), due to the fact it is traditionally upper south, but has many northern characteristics in modern times. Most residents I have spoken to consider DC to be the mid-atlantic or neutral also. I am from Tidewater VA and I have never met anyone who considers DC the north (even down here). With that said, I have never heard anyone call the city the south, except for some people from NYC (who believe from Maryland down is the south). DC is like a combination of Richmond and Boston.
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Originally Posted by personone
It's probably because DC has never officially been designated as a northeastern city. It (along with MD) has historically and even to this day been classified as Southern.
It's a never ending debate, and nobody will agree 100%. I classify it as Mid-Atlantic. I agree with you it's not that similar to most southern cities, but it's also different than the historic Northeast cities. It doesn't have an industrial history/fabric to it. It doesn't have the older ethnic groups and associated neighborhoods. It lacks a large blue collar population that you find in the other NE cities. It has a much lower Catholic population than the other NE cities.
On the flip side, you can obviously point out lots of differences between DC and southern cities from food to look and feel of the neighborhoods, etc. It has similarities and differences to both the north and the south, which is why Mid-Atlantic always makes most sense to me. It's also such a unique city being the capital, lack of skyscrapers, etc. It doesn't fit neatly into just one box.
I agree wholeheartedly with both of you. And much of suburban DC is like "general American suburbia" as opposed to being either Northern or Southern.
OH NO here we go again!! The never-ending debate! I stand firmly behind my viewpoint on this as I have in previous threads, DC is part of the NORTH and will always be for the following reasons:
- DC is geographically located in the NORTHeast quadrant of the continental US, there is no debate behind this.
- DC's physical appearance, architecture, and infrastructure resembles that of a Northeastern city (Philly, NYC, etc.), it does not resemble that of a Southern city, not to mention even from a historical standpoint it is very Northern..
- DC's society and culture resembles that of a metropolitan Northeastern city (once again similar to Philly, NYC, etc.), I have lived in an actual Southern city before and DC's local culture is NOT Southern in any way or form..
- DC's weather, especially winters, is characteristic of a typical Northeastern city, winters are COLD, snowy, and overcast, even local governments are well prepared for "winter storms" unlike Southern cities which are not..
- DC is even part of the NORTHEAST regional Amtrak train route which specifically links and serves Northeastern cities..
- Having lived in the South, no one in the South considers DC as "part of the South", the majority consensus of Southerners will always associate DC with the north and consider it a Northeastern city, because it is.. For some reasons Northerners always seem to have a problem with accepting that DC as part of the North, I have never understood why..
Others have addressed other points of this post, but the emboldened part stood out to me. I'm not even sure how you can say that when, like other Southern cities historically, DC had slavery, Jim Crow, and a sizable Black population from the beginning. It also didn't have the heavy industry or the pervasive European ethnic influence of Northern urban centers.
"Really, in general the white people living in DC and Baltimore aren't culturally southern because many of them are from somewhere else,"
Well, this is more true with DC. So many white people "from DC" are not even 1st generation born there. But when you meet families that are 2nd or even 3rd generation, a sizable proportion of them, maybe about 1/2, will seem to have a southern accent. I haven't watched this video in a while, but IIRC both of these guys were born in northern Virginia very near DC. Most Americans would say they have southern accents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_cB2efFke0
from a known old Northern Virginia family: https://vimeo.com/54220142
finally a more liminal example, but would sound southern to some: https://vimeo.com/68057183
FWIW I've heard a very similar accent in the area around Sugarloaf Mt. and Frederick MD, so it isn't just a Virginia thing. It's almost always an older speaker though.
But, not sure why I'm jumping in the fray again...culturally, DC has always been more of a mixed city (North/South) than any other. Its location was meant as a compromise as I pointed out in my prior post. The being said, it was located south of the Mason-Dixon and never became industrial as Baltimore did; if you had to assign it *historically* one way or the other, sorry, it simply has to be a Southern city. But it was always the least southern city of the south. OTOH, there's a strong case for considering Baltimore the southernmost northern city. It had heavy industry. It had a lot of Germanic immigrants and other European ethic groups. (Nancy Pelosi is from there) It was "big" at a time when the only big cities were northern cities. (besides New Orleans, which is obviously sui generis for a host of reasons) Look at the contrast in 1820 between DC and Baltimore: https://www.census.gov/population/ww...0027/tab05.txt
I think this survey really need another option, "none of the above". I just don't think you can classify DC, these days, along typical north/south lines. Mid-Atlantic is the closest, of course.
Last edited by ZigZagBoom; 06-10-2016 at 03:06 PM..
"Really, in general the white people living in DC and Baltimore aren't culturally southern because many of them are from somewhere else,"
Well, this is more true with DC. So many white people "from DC" are not even 1st generation born there. But when you meet families that are 2nd or even 3rd generation, a sizable proportion of them, maybe about 1/2, will seem to have a southern accent. I haven't watched this video in a while, but IIRC both of these guys were born in northern Virginia very near DC. Most Americans would say they have southern accents:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_cB2efFke0
from a known old Northern Virginia family: [vimeo]54220142[/vimeo] https://vimeo.com/54220142
finally a more liminal example, but would sound southern to some: [vimeo]68057183[/vimeo] https://vimeo.com/68057183
FWIW I've heard a very similar accent in the area around Sugarloaf Mt. and Frederick MD, so it isn't just a Virginia thing. It's almost always an older speaker though.
But, not sure why I'm jumping in the fray again...culturally, DC has always been more of a mixed city (North/South) than any other. Its location was meant as a compromise as I pointed out in my prior post. The being said, it was located south of the Mason-Dixon and never became industrial as Baltimore did; if you had to assign it *historically* one way or the other, sorry, it simply has to be a Southern city. But it was always the least southern city of the south. OTOH, there's a strong case for considering Baltimore the southernmost northern city. It had heavy industry. It had a lot of Germanic immigrants and other European ethic groups. (Nancy Pelosi is from there) It was "big" at a time when the only big cities were northern cities. (besides New Orleans, which is obviously sui generis for a host of reasons) Look at the contrast in 1820 between DC and Baltimore: https://www.census.gov/population/ww...0027/tab05.txt
I think this survey really need another option, "none of the above". I just don't think you can classify DC, these days, along typical north/south lines. Mid-Atlantic is the closest, of course.
In that population link, including Baltimore and Washington, 5 of the top twelve aren't northern.
I've never heard young whites from the DC area having an accent, but that doesn't mean that it's barely possible. In Baltimore, the white neighborhoods of the city are mostly gentrified areas (excluding places in North Baltimore and south of the river), and the white kids that I grew up with most often has families in other states. Even in Towson and other inner suburbs, the accent can be hard to find among the younger generations. When I was in high school, out of twenty white teachers I had, three were from the area, and the teachers of other ethnicities were not.
I agree that Baltimore has some more typically northern elements and think it is a good example of a town very close to the "border". The thing that stops me from saying that it's a northern city is the fact that natives and outsiders alike still considered the city to be a southern one. Part of why that happened can be explained by the better noticeably smaller proportion of white ethnics in Baltimore, and their greater assimilation into society. Consider how Baltimore's notable dishes do not portray an ethnic heritage outside of a German one (which isn't usually considered "ethnic"), while in Philadelphia, Italian influence is very obvious. The fact that Baltimore was still "southern" even with those features that DC lacks makes it seem more southern to me. Even when it comes to their dialects, Baltimore is a mix of Mid-Atlantic and Virginia features, while the Mid-Atlantic is mostly gone by DC.
Last edited by ialmostforgot; 06-11-2016 at 08:16 AM..
In that population link, including Baltimore and Washington, 5 of the top twelve aren't northern.
Yeah but you have to compare orders of magnitude...and looking at the top 12 doesn't really make sense since some of those were amalgamated into their parent regions. The biggest shall we say English colonial city of the south was Charleston; Boston+Salem is twice as big. Baltimore is 2.5X as big. "Big cities" in 1820 were clearly a northern phenomena.
But I'm still fine if you want to say Baltimore was southern, historically: it was south of the Mason-Dixon which as I'm always pointing out in these threads, WAS as close to the official border N/S as there has ever been. I still think it was a special case; the last northern city as you headed south, albeit in the least southern state.
Quote:
"is the fact that natives and outsiders alike still considered the city to be a southern one."
However, I don't think you can really apply a blanket statement like this, nowadays. As I've pointed out in other threads, I knew a LOT of moderate Republican or Democrats in central Maryland who joked that driving to Virginia was going into the south. I knew a guy for example, who moved from Ohio to do IT consulting in the DC area. He said he would never have moved to Virginia. And he was a pro-life Catholic republican! Baltimore city and county, Howard County, Montgomery and even Anne Arundel are WAY more Catholic, and WAY more Jewish than the NoVA suburbs. People there might, again, for the reason I do, consider Maryland de jure southern...because it is south of the Mason-Dixon, it is de facto Northern these days and has been for a long time.
Last edited by ZigZagBoom; 06-11-2016 at 09:26 AM..
As for addressing the accents used by people in Baltimore: that is just an incredibly complex topic. More so than DC where so many people immigrated recently it's kind of hopeless to say, at least among whites, that it is anything but "generic American". Yes, some people have vaguely mid-Atlantic or even Tidewater Virginia-ish accents. But it is very splintered. I know rich kids from Towson (well, they aren't kids anymore, but they were when I met them in the mid 2000s and they were starting their first job) who went to places like Amherst for uni. and wouldn't be caught dead sounding even a little southern. OTOH some blue collar white guy in Glen Burnie, sure, some of those might still sound a little southern. The old money Baltimore doña from the start of this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snbW6hI8xuY has the kind of lilting, very light southern accent that I think is pure Baltimore. (although she actually lived in her family's "manor house" in Monkton) But an interesting thing I notice when speaking to people on the MARC train (regular rider for years) is many professional African-Americans in Baltimore seem to be accent neutral, or even have a slight Philadelphia sound to their voices...while the African-Americans I work with in DC, who are from DC, maintain the typical upper south African American dialect. So...it's an incredibly complex topic and accents have an element of the performative, especially in a place where there's a lot of mixing. People "code switch" as the linguists say.
Last edited by ZigZagBoom; 06-11-2016 at 10:09 AM..
"Most southerners would look at you sideways if you said DC was the south."
Wouldn't be the first time southerners didn't know their history LOL.
But that being said, I'm not saying it's southern, though it was historically a southern city. (or at least the Port of Georgetown and Alexandria, VA, were...) As I pointed out it's a special category that is neither southern nor northern. Which is what it was intended to be insofar as that was possible.
"Most southerners would look at you sideways if you said DC was the south."
Wouldn't be the first time southerners didn't know their history LOL.
But that being said, I'm not saying it's southern, though it was historically a southern city. (or at least the Port of Georgetown and Alexandria, VA, were...) As I pointed out it's a special category that is neither southern nor northern. Which is what it was intended to be insofar as that was possible.
Let's just say DC is mid-atlantic with a nod to the northeast.
Let's just say DC is mid-atlantic with a nod to the northeast.
Meh...
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