Definition of South, Southern Is Changing

http://www.comcast.net ^ | 11 25 05 | ALLEN G. BREED

[papertyger]

I have always considered anyone south of Jacksonville, or north of Georgia a yankee anyway. :)

Jacksonville IS the capital of the South. Cities like Atlanta are too busy trying to out-yankee the yankees!

[papertyger]

Many have forgotten the significance or location of The Mason-Dixon Line. Remember that Rising Sun is North of the Line.

Okay, I know you're squirmin' in your chair like a young'n before recess, so tell us the significance of the Mason-Dixon and Rising Sun ;^>

[Wallace T.]

Most of the people of the South are descendants of at least one non-Southern immigrant.

If you are talking about the traditional white Southerner, in whom Scots-Irish and English strains are predominant, your statement is correct insofar as New Englanders and Middle Atlantic residents migrated into the South in late colonial and early republican times because the frontier advance was more active in the South than the North. Southern migration westward had reached as far as the northeast corner of then Spanish-ruled Texas by 1811 even as New Englanders had only penetrated as far west as northeast Ohio, the former Western Reserve of Connecticut, in great numbers. Even parts of New York and Maine remained wilderness as Kentucky, Tennessee, and (mostly Southern settled) Ohio entered the Union. As a result, the opportunities for land ownership were greater in the South. Abraham Lincoln's paternal lineage was English Puritans who settled in Massachusetts around 1640. His grandfather migrated to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia from Massachusetts, and later his father moved to Kentucky.

Additionally, the Upper South and Border States received some migration from the Northern states in the 19th Century. Pockets of Union sympathy in parts of Arkansas and Texas often coincided with settlement from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and other Northern states. After Reconstruction ended, Southern commercial growth attracted businessmen and professionals from the North and Europe.

However, all the early migrations of Northerners were made by people who assimilated into Southern culture. The greatest portion represented small farmers whose agrarian lifestyle differed little from their neighbors. They were largely unaffected by the religious skepticism and disdain for traditional culture that began to adversely impact Northern elites in the 19th Century. Like the minorities of Germans and Irish Catholics in the mostly English and Scots-Irish South, Northern settlers adopted Southern folkways and religion, intermarried, and by the second generation were as Southern as any descendant of the first families of Virginia.

The breed of Northerner that has migrated to the South after World War II is very different from other Northern waves. Especially in the case of those people from New England, New York, and New Jersey, they are very different in culture, lifestyle, religion, and ethnicity from the Southern mainstream. Midwesterners and Middle Atlantic people (PA, DE, MD) have fewer of these differences, yet some have an attitude of superiority to Southerners based on little more than their inflated self-worth. Several Southern cities, such as Dallas and Houston, have large suburban areas where Western, Midwestern, and Middle Atlantic influences have overtaken traditional Southern ones. In other areas, such as the east coast of Florida and several North Carolina cities, there have developed areas dominated by Northeasterners where many of the residents speak like they still lived within 50 miles of Times Square.

The migration of politically and religiously conservative Midwestern, Middle Atlantic, and Western white Americans into the South will ultimately be absorbed into the mainstream of the white South. Continued migration of liberal, culturally alien Northeasterners may ultimately tip the Atlantic seaboard of the South, except for South Carolina, over to the dark side, politically and otherwise. Next to the illegal alien problem, the influx of these liberals is the greatest threat to the survival of the South as a distinct region and culture.

[NaughtiusMaximus]

Ditto for Flagstaff, AZ. 15 years ago, sleepy little mountain town. Now, rampaging neo-California cloverleaf microcity. The only consolation is that my real estate will sell for about 8X what I paid for it.

Relocating to front range of Wyoming, myself.

[tkathy]

Southerners, as well as illegals, need to assimilate. They are living in unassimilated enclaves and don't speak the language.

[NaughtiusMaximus]

Sorry.

(Move along, people, nothing to see here.)

[papertyger]

I wanna party with YOU! ;^>

[tertiary01]

I believe you can't discount the influence of east coasters such as Barbara Boxer who invaded California and made it much what it is today. But other than that I believe it is the climate that creates the Southern Culture, just like it is the Californian climate that creates the Californian easy living La-La attitude that keeps getting recreated by each new immigrant group. The original La-Las in California were numerous Indian tribes(except for those in the northeastern part of the state).

[pepperdog]

Shhhh! We're trying to keep a low profile. Just tell them about the terrible tornadoes.

[Wallace T.]

California, particularly Northern California, has always been culturally distinct from the inland West. San Francisco and Monterrey were influenced by Yankees even before the annexation of California. With its Yankee descended elite, dense urban settlement, mixed European descended working class (with strong Italian and Irish strains), and its status as the principal West Coast port, San Francisco and Oakland far more resembled New York and Boston than Salt Lake City or Denver. San Francisco even had a neighborhood of Irish Americans, many of whom worked on the waterfront, who spoke with an accent reminiscent of New York. Clint Eastwood, who grew up in Oakland, is the great-grandson of a New Yorker who migrated westward in the Gold Rush era and did not return.

However, Midwesterners and Southerners also influenced the state, and in the 1890-1914 period, California politics was affected by both Populism, mostly Southern and lower Midwestern in origin, and Progressivism, with its roots in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. Except for Hawaii, the unions were more powerful in California than anywhere else west of the Mississippi.

While Southern California, specifically Los Angeles, had a large Jewish community from the early 1900s, in part due to the movie industry, they were overwhelmed numerically by successive waves of migrants, mostly from the Midwest, who had converted suburban Los Angeles, especially Orange County, into a conservative bastion. Few of these migrants were drawn by the movie industry, but for employment and business opportunities. John Wayne, born in Iowa, migrated as a child to Southern California with his father, who was seeking employment as a pharmacist.

This migration moved California politics rightward. The same GOP that supported Earl Warren in the 1940s became the party of Ronald Reagan (a native of Illinois) in the 1960s. Reagan's election and the status of California as a Republican bastion on a national level from 1952 to 1988 reflected the strong influence of conservative and mostly Midwestern migrants. Even as late as the 1980s, Rush Limbaugh, a Missourian, used his Sacramento radio station to develop his conservative talk show that he would later carry to prominence in New York.

What tipped California into the liberal camp, perhaps for generations to come, were three shifts in population flow: the end of westward migration from the Midwest as the attractiveness of the South increased, the eastward migration of white Californians, especially conservatives, due to the high cost of living and deteriorating living conditions, and the massive migration of Hispanics, legal or not, into the state. Pete Wilson (a native of Missouri) was probably the last traditional Republican to hold the governorship of California.

The fate of California should be a warning not only to the South but the inland West, even to Mormon majority Utah, that liberals and foreign immigrants can overturn the political and social order in a relatively short time.

[antisocial]

"Southerners, as well as illegals, need to assimilate. They are living in unassimilated enclaves and don't speak the language."

Wait just a minute there, Southerners don't need to assimilate. Yankees need to stop their invasion of the South. Illegals don't need to assimilate, they need to be deported. Come to think of it Yankees need to be deported too. Texas is being invaded by Yankees and illegals simultaneously, it's really starting to get aggrevating.

[Wallace T.]

With regard to assimilation, the Northerner from a Midwestern or Middle Atlantic background is usually far from a hard core Yankee. I live in a northern suburb of Dallas where several Northern based denominations, such as the Reformed Church in America (moderately liberal), the Christian Reformed Church (somewhat conservative), and the North American Baptist Convention (very conservative) started church plants in the 1970s and 1980s, due to a migration of Midwesterners into the Dallas area. Two of the three churches have closed down, as the members or their children shifted to similar churches with a strong and longstanding presence in the South. The third church, Christian Reformed in past affiliation, has recently switched to the Presbyterian Church in America, a conservative denomination with a majority of its congregations located in the South.

Assimilation of Northerners of conservative political and theological sentiment into the Southern mainstream is taking place and is a good thing. Better Dick Armey (North Dakota native) or Ron Paul (born in Pennsylvania) than Ann Richards or Molly Ivins, both native Texans, the former a descendant of early Texas pioneers.

[tkathy]

It was an evil confederate, commy pinko plot to take some of the warmest states for their unassimilated enclaves that still don't speak the language.

[antisocial]

"It was an evil confederate, commy pinko plot to take some of the warmest states for their unassimilated enclaves that still don't speak the language."

You've got a bad attitude. If, by "the language" you are referring to that nerve grating dialect they speak in the Northeast, I'm right glad we don't. I think you'll discover if you look that the commie pinkos seem to be heavily concentrated in the Northeast. We do, however, have evil confederates, which I much prefer to Damnyankees.

[nothingnew]

"Why not go up to Montana? It's a cattlemans paradise to hear Jake tell it."

Heh heh heh...too late now...the bankers and lawyers are already there Gus. I also hear there's a lot of surly bartenders up there now, and I can't abide them.

FMCDH(BITS)

[nothingnew]

Relocating to front range of Wyoming, myself.

Let me know how it goes FRiend...I'm interested.

FMCDH(BITS)

[Savage Beast]

All right, all you Southerners. Wallace T. has spoken (post #23). Now get out there and do your duty! You have a big job ahead of you, and there's no time to waste.

[Savage Beast]

You have made a very good point, Tert. If the livin' were not so easy in California, Californians would be far more concerned about the threats that loom over them from all directions.