Who should be expelled from the South?

[EbonyGardens]

FYI, "North Florida" is the same as AL & MS re: "negative past concerning race relations" :

http://www.floridamemory.com/OnlineClassro...ivil_rights.cfm

One of the reasons I hate northern Florida so much, lack of diversity and now our negative racial past

[GoodNews]

West Virginia just doesn't stand out to me to be the South. Next I would have to say VA because it sometimes considered being the Northeast.

[Greenville]

I think it depends on where you are in Virginia. Southern Virginia, especially in the mountainous southwest around Roanoke and Blacksburg, is definitely southern. Richmond is southern. Norfolk and Virginia Beach have more of a mid-Atlantic feel, but I would not classify them as having a northern feel. Northern Virginia is just metro. I don't consider it northern or southern, but a really good mix of people from everywhere.

[JWCJ]

Metro areas mid-atlantic, rural area southern.

[krazeeboi]

To me, the designation "mid-Atlantic" is purely geographical in nature, whereas "Southern" has geographic as well as cultural overtones. I guess "mid-Atlantic" could mean a blending of Southern and Northern influences, but it was always a rather generic term with me, something like a "catch-all" term.

[flyfisher]

Southern is a culture, a way of life, a mindset, a tradition. It's a man opening and holding a door for a woman; saying "yes ma'am" to a lady; eating frog legs, mudbugs, poke salad, collard greens, cornbread and grits; reading the bible and going to church on Sunday and Wednesday night; listening to the crickets chirp and the frogs croak; swinging on a tire swing and dropping into a bayou; hunting with hounds; seeing the magnolias bloom; whistling "Dixie"; picking cotton; watching the tugs on the Big Muddy; skipping school to go fishing; BBQ; Blues; Bluegrass; moonshine; celebrating the honorable Robert E. Lee; Leonard Skinnard and Alabama; the Kentucky Derby....Nobody says it all better than Buddy Jewell in the song "Sweet Southern Comfort". It's not as simple as expelling a state. Every state that ceceded and joined the Confederacy is no doubt southern. Some border states will have mixed opinions now, as they did back then. Every southern state is seeing its southern culture slowly diminish. Particularly the areas with larger populations. If you think you're southern, if you embrace being southern, if you're proud of being a southerner....then you're southern.

[krazeeboi]

I don't think all native Southerners would agree with all those requirements or characteristics, although some do capture the historical essence of what it means to be Southern.

[swake]

Southern is a culture, a way of life, a mindset, a tradition. It's a man opening and holding a door for a woman; saying "yes ma'am" to a lady; eating frog legs, mudbugs, poke salad, collard greens, cornbread and grits; reading the bible and going to church on Sunday and Wednesday night; listening to the crickets chirp and the frogs croak; swinging on a tire swing and dropping into a bayou; hunting with hounds; seeing the magnolias bloom; whistling "Dixie"; picking cotton; watching the tugs on the Big Muddy; skipping school to go fishing; BBQ; Blues; Bluegrass; moonshine; celebrating the honorable Robert E. Lee; Leonard Skinnard and Alabama; the Kentucky Derby....Nobody says it all better than Buddy Jewell in the song "Sweet Southern Comfort". It's not as simple as expelling a state. Every state that ceceded and joined the Confederacy is no doubt southern. Some border states will have mixed opinions now, as they did back then. Every southern state is seeing its southern culture slowly diminish. Particularly the areas with larger populations. If you think you're southern, if you embrace being southern, if you're proud of being a southerner....then you're southern.

Then Oklahoma is really out, Ma'am is almost never heard, no frog legs served at all except at French resturants. I've never heard of mud bugs or poke salad. Is poke salad something that is served in sports bar in Stillwater for OSU (the 'Pokes)? Collard greens I've heard of but never seen, cornbread is good but grits suck and are very rarely served here. Oklahoma certainly is religious and we have lots of crickets but no Bayou's, hunting is something done with dogs. We have lots of blues and BBQ, but more of a midwestern style, think KC and Chicago, not Memphis. There's no moonshine here. I've never heard someone "whistle dixie" in person, that's just in the movies about the south. Robert E Lee is just someone from history that most kids have never heard of, the car is more famous in Oklahoma. The Derby is just one part of the triple crown and the civil war is not something that happened here, it was over there somewhere out east.

I guess we are out....

[AuLukey]

While I think W.V. is stretching it, I don't think of the South when I hear Arkansas. The first thing that comes to mind is usually Mid-West. I almost put Florida as well because of its more northern appeal.

[Arkansawyer]

While I think W.V. is stretching it, I don't think of the South when I hear Arkansas. The first thing that comes to mind is usually Mid-West. I almost put Florida as well because of its more northern appeal.

First, to reiterate what the literates among us have already pointed out, the poll asks which state you would like be "eliminated" from the South, not which state doesn't belong in the South. Obviously all the states in the poll are part of the de facto South, with the exception of Kentucky and West Virginia, which undeniably have some Southern qualities. It's confusing as to why the subtitle is "So you wanna seceede [sic], huh?," suggesting that people would be choosing to remove their own state.

As a resident of this state, which defines itself so much on being "Southern," I"d like to show the ignorance of your opinion, regardless of the fact that you misunderstood the premise of the poll. Arkansas is as Midwestern as North Carolina is Northeastern.

Which of our famous residents do you not consider Southern? Johnny Cash, Al Green, Bill Clinton, Bear Bryant, Billy Bob Thornton, or John Grisham?

What part of Arkansas' land isn't Southern? The Ozarks (I thought the Midwest was flat), or the Delta, the birthplace of the Blues and the richest cotton-producing region in the world? Speaking of cotton, Arkansas was ranked second nationally in cotton production last year.

Why did Arkansas join the Confederacy, why is it one six states that recognize Robert E. Lee with a state holiday, and why does our minor league baseball team use his image in one of its logos?

Why is Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs home to the Racing Festival of the South? Why is the Oxford American, a magazine dedicated to writing about the South, based in Arkansas? Why is the University of Arkansas a member of the Southeastern Conference?

Why do people in Arkansas have Southern accents, eat Southern food, and consider themselves to be Southern?

I think the answers are obvious enough. Now, hopefully you bring to mind a more accurate idea when you think of Arkansas.

[Jerseyman4]

Which of our famous residents do you not consider Southern? Johnny Cash, Al Green, Bill Clinton, Bear Bryant, Billy Bob Thornton, or John Grisham?

Can't forget Sam Walton

[erdogs]

Southern is a culture, a way of life, a mindset, a tradition. It's a man opening and holding a door for a woman; saying "yes ma'am" to a lady; eating frog legs, mudbugs, poke salad, collard greens, cornbread and grits; reading the bible and going to church on Sunday and Wednesday night; listening to the crickets chirp and the frogs croak; swinging on a tire swing and dropping into a bayou; hunting with hounds; seeing the magnolias bloom; whistling "Dixie"; picking cotton; watching the tugs on the Big Muddy; skipping school to go fishing; BBQ; Blues; Bluegrass; moonshine; celebrating the honorable Robert E. Lee; Leonard Skinnard and Alabama; the Kentucky Derby....Nobody says it all better than Buddy Jewell in the song "Sweet Southern Comfort". It's not as simple as expelling a state. Every state that ceceded and joined the Confederacy is no doubt southern. Some border states will have mixed opinions now, as they did back then. Every southern state is seeing its southern culture slowly diminish. Particularly the areas with larger populations. If you think you're southern, if you embrace being southern, if you're proud of being a southerner....then you're southern.

That was the south 30 years ago, not today. I have family that live in Rossville, GA In the mountains. I've been going there since the early 80's and it was always very suburban. These are for the most part stereotypes that people from the north hold. Don't get it twisted!

[Greenville]

Southern is a culture, a way of life, a mindset, a tradition. It's a man opening and holding a door for a woman; saying "yes ma'am" to a lady; eating frog legs, mudbugs, poke salad, collard greens, cornbread and grits; reading the bible and going to church on Sunday and Wednesday night; listening to the crickets chirp and the frogs croak; swinging on a tire swing and dropping into a bayou; hunting with hounds; seeing the magnolias bloom; whistling "Dixie"; picking cotton; watching the tugs on the Big Muddy; skipping school to go fishing; BBQ; Blues; Bluegrass; moonshine; celebrating the honorable Robert E. Lee; Leonard Skinnard and Alabama; the Kentucky Derby....Nobody says it all better than Buddy Jewell in the song "Sweet Southern Comfort". It's not as simple as expelling a state. Every state that ceceded and joined the Confederacy is no doubt southern. Some border states will have mixed opinions now, as they did back then. Every southern state is seeing its southern culture slowly diminish. Particularly the areas with larger populations. If you think you're southern, if you embrace being southern, if you're proud of being a southerner....then you're southern.

I think this description fits "rural" much more than it fits "Southern." Perhaps that is because I grew up in the south (Greenville, South Carolina), yet can only identify with holding doors and being a Christian - neither of which are exclusively "Southern" at all. To each his or her own.

[Okie]

Well it appears as if Oklahoma has already been expelled from the South. I guess the roosters and cowbiscuit country in the northwestern edge of the state offended someone.

[davidals]

Metro areas mid-atlantic, rural area southern.

LOL - that's the Atlantic side of the 'South' all the way down to FL, at least the major metros: we've already gone over South Florida as "the 6th Borough," the NC Triangle and Charlotte's Northeastern influx is oft-commented upon (Cary's "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees" appellation was even discussed in National Geographic, for whatever that's worth), and everyone seems kinda on the fence with Virginia as well, with NoVa solidly in the "not Southern" column.

Cheap travel and the internet - Northern culture and Southern culture are blending like crazy anyway...

Rather than mourn the loss of stereotypical 'Southernness,' I love how diverse the South is getting to be - to anyone who would paint the region with a broad brush, I love to claim things and people that might not seem southen, like the 80s Athens mucic scene, or James Taylor, or the Cuban and Caribbean culture in S. Florida, or the tech-and-progressivism seen in places like RTP. The artists and hippies of Asheville, or the generalized "bizarreness" of Florida at first don't seem Southern, but if you consider how surreal folks like William Faulkner imagined (or mythologized) the South as being, the strangeness of those places does fit well into the limits of that surrealism.

I know of one very Southern NC town where I can get an $11 plate of genuine Sicilian dinner (the guy running the place is Sicilian) - you can taste the wine in the sauce - a block north of a courhouse square that looks like a set from some antibellum film.

One of my best friends grew up in Bangalore, in southern India, and came to the US for grad school; he got to NC, and - if it's possible to land here from another country and go native, he's managed to do it. His fascination with the idea of the South has turned into a love of the South. I remember him flying out to visit friends in Calif. - he'd never been out there - and recoiling at West Coast culture, and when he got back and was talking about his reactions, and why he felt so at home here, he mentioned all manner of things - from the hot summers, to superficial (and not always true) stereotypes like the perception of "manners" and "friendliness," to the combative history of ethnic and class division, to a protective outlook towards regional culture, all of which reminded him (for all of the vast differences) of where he was from. Weird, but also a testament to how intricate and complex Southern 'sensibilities' or 'culture' really are.

Edited to add a bunch of rambling, rambling opinionatedness.

[Jerseyman4]

I know of one very Southern NC town where I can get an $11 plate of genuine Sicilian dinner (the guy running the place is Sicilian) - you can taste the wine in the sauce - a block north of a courhouse square that looks like a set from some antibellum film.

Please tell me where this restaurant is

I doubt its Valdese since they were founded by protestant italians and Sicily is all catholic and way further south than the founders of Valdese came from in NW Italy. YES, i said protestant!

[lammius]

Southern is a culture, a way of life, a mindset, a tradition. It's a man opening and holding a door for a woman; saying "yes ma'am" to a lady; eating frog legs, mudbugs, poke salad, collard greens, cornbread and grits; reading the bible and going to church on Sunday and Wednesday night; listening to the crickets chirp and the frogs croak; swinging on a tire swing and dropping into a bayou; hunting with hounds; seeing the magnolias bloom; whistling "Dixie"; picking cotton; watching the tugs on the Big Muddy; skipping school to go fishing; BBQ; Blues; Bluegrass; moonshine; celebrating the honorable Robert E. Lee; Leonard Skinnard and Alabama; the Kentucky Derby....Nobody says it all better than Buddy Jewell in the song "Sweet Southern Comfort". It's not as simple as expelling a state. Every state that ceceded and joined the Confederacy is no doubt southern. Some border states will have mixed opinions now, as they did back then. Every southern state is seeing its southern culture slowly diminish. Particularly the areas with larger populations. If you think you're southern, if you embrace being southern, if you're proud of being a southerner....then you're southern.

Beating a dead horse perhaps, but this was not my experience growing up in VA at all. Sure I hold doors, but not just for women. I like BBQ. Everything else I've either never done or don't know what it is (like mudbugs, poke salad, or Buddy Jewell).

I think being Southern is really just an issue of geography now. Much of the unique culture of many areas of the country (not just the south) has disappeared. MTV has taught the younger generations how to conform to a plastic "American" mould. I think people who grow up in Charleston, SC for example are no more southern than someone who moved there from NYC 10 years ago. IMO, if you live in the south and have made the place your home and part of your identity, you're southern.

[davidals]

Please tell me where this restaurant is

I doubt its Valdese since they were founded by protestant italians and Sicily is all catholic and way further south than the founders of Valdese came from in NW Italy. YES, i said protestant!

LOL - Pulcinellas in Downtown Graham, Alamance County. I used to work near there, about 5 years back, and we would stop in for lunch weekly, and the place was always packed. Dinner is a bit priceier.

I guess from having the courthouse right there, Graham has an unuual concentration of affordable, high-quality little resturants, all kind-of in the well-kept-secret category. I think all the lawyers and county-seat people demand good lunches of something...there's an Asian place about a block in the other direction that's pretty good as well.

A real treat of wandering - in my case NC - is stumbling over great eats in unlikely places...

I had no idea Valdese was founded by Italians; this I will have to read up on a bit. The heritage of lots of places down here is more diverse than assumed - I grew up knowing about the Greek population in Charlotte; in recent years I recall reading a feature in the News & Observer about Lebanese immigrants in eastern NC (going back 100 years). And there's a great book out digging into Charleston's Jewish community...