Que? Not to hijack or anything, but I’m curious too now. What did you think they were, and they’re white? As in Caucasian?
of course
Yes, your point being what?
I noted that Md had split loyalties - southern MD is in many ways indistinguishable from the plantation history of points further south, tobacco being a big crop. On the DelMarVa peninsula, the cultural heritage is very closely tied to the regions of nearby VA.
You mean that one day in an area as large as the US, there will not be any regional cultural differences in culture? Even a country as pointedly homogeneous as Japan, with a history dating back 1000 years can not say that. I won’t hold my breath, I suggest you don’t either 
Well, aside from not answering the question where I asked for a clear definition, you are wrong.
The South IS a geographic concept. At its heart, it refers to the states of the original 13, of which VA is one, that were slave states at the formation of our country. It has been extended to the states which formed the Confederacy. Maybe you can further extend it to territories (or even non-politically defined regions) that, for whatever reasons (I am not a Civil War buff) held allegiances in some sense to those breakaway states. This last bit is fuzzy, leave them out if you wish.
Still, these are all geographically defined. You can point to them on a map.
If you read the notes of Madison on the Constitutional Debates, you can see that there most certainly was already a divide between South and North, and it is quite clear where Virginia was. This had nothing to do with culture like sweet tea and grits, and everything to do with political views regarding slavery. The very terms “Southern states” and “Northern states” was already in currency in those debates.
Chamblee, Georgia? Are you kidding? Blacksburg & Chamblee don’t even feel remotely the same. One is a tiny college town in a rural and mountainous area, the other is a large sprawling generic suburb with an enormous Asian immigrant population. How in the world do you perceive the two to be in any way similar?
Blacksburg feels more similar to Chamblee, to me, than it does to Vienna. Also, Blacksburg is much more populous than Chamblee.
When stated as a topic for debate, that is far clearer than the OP. It may in fact be true, and I might agree, while I don’t agree that the same region is not part of the South.
I realize the debate evolved around you, and wasn’t your intent, but maybe the lack of shared understanding about what you were actually discussing was between you and your roommate as well.
I’m sorry, but that’s preposterous. Even if it’s more similar to Chamblee than to Vienna, the comparison is absolutely terrible. I practically lived in Blacksburg for about 6 months a few years back, and I can promise you that it’s like saying Maui feels more like Skinectity than it does Pittsburgh.
Chamblee proper may be less populous than Blacksburg, but it’s in the middle of a large swath of suburban sprawl.
Since we are only talking about VA, the fact that all of those lists include VA only supports my point.
Ahem, did you, or did you not write the following?
Again, you’re harping on a piece of Civil War minutia. The Civil War has little if anything to do with how Marylanders or Northern Virginians perceive the culture that surrounds them.
- It’s conceivable that cultural differences will be divorced from geography.
- It’s conceivable that whatever cultural differences exist, that no particular group will be identified as “South” (or “North” or whatever). These things are not set in stone.
Aha, so not a geographical definition. A legal one.
Again, not a geographical definition. A political one.
Non-geographical definition Number 3! A political/cultural one.
Bzzt. Fallacious inference. No points.
A repeat of non-geographical definition Number 1.
And the fact that these groups could be roughly correlated with compass points was accidental. All the definitions you offer are non-geographical.
This map seems somewhat illustrative to me.
Not my experience re: MD, but what do I know, until my generation, my entire extended family on both sides has lived in MD since our ancestors immigrated to the US.
Everyone I ever met, born and bred from VA or MD has their world colored somehow by their perception of Civil War related issues. They may not be able to state it as such, but it is there for others to observe.
I can’t conceive of that. Help me understand this fantasy.
How will it happen, and what will the world look like when it is completely homogeneous?
Set in stone? No, but they are indelibly in some of the most important historical documents we have. That will never change.
If nothing else, there are too many people still proud of or otherwise affected by that heritage to allow any sort of re-branding of the “South” as pure and clean and indistinguishable from anyplace else.
Now, does NoVa, being a strong economic region on the very edge of the South wish to have, or maybe already have, an active branding campaign to minimize the connection in the public’s mind with its history?
I wouldn’t be surprised.
But propaganda, even for a good (economic development e.g.) purpose does not make the underlying issue go away. Example: “I heart NY” has done wonders for the city for decades, but do we really “heart NY” unconditionally? No, we see the flaws as well as the good parts, past, present, and into the future.
Same for NoVa.
No, shorthand for a list of states.
Are you even trying to pay attention and grasp the point?
OK, well, if in your world, “states” are not something you can relate to geographically, then you might have the same curious sense of words the OP had at the beginning of this thread.
To his credit though, he came to accept my point (and those of others).
Set you are hung up on how to describe a region that consists of a list of states. My 6 year old niece grasps those concepts just fine, probably since she had a puzzle where each of the states was a jigsaw piece when she was three or so. If you want me to take you seriously, please figure this out in a hurry. You know damn well what states/region I am talking about. If not, your local toy store probably has those puzzles you can buy and play with for a few bucks.
None of my classmates ever showed any sign of giving a shit about the Civil War. I don’t care about it either. It doesn’t affect me and never has, since it ended 123 years before I was born.
And every year, the percentage of people living in Maryland who can be described this way is smaller and smaller. They aren’t going to apply these views to the place they live.
And absolutely nobody I associate with looks to the Civil War to color their perception of the place they live in. It won’t be long until the kind of people I know vastly outnumber the kind of people you know.
Do you think that America is the only place in the world? There are a lot of places where cultural groups cannot be defined on a geographic basis. Rwanda, for example. And Bosnia. And Singapore. Economics and vast cultural movements are quickly changing places like the European Union, China, and India such that geography is starting to have scant relation to cultural differences
Since when does “not based on geography” mean “homogenous”?
And each year that passes, the cultural conditions described by a “historical document” become less and less applicable.
Ah, I get it. So the only way things can change from your pet point of view is insidious propaganda, and blindness to history, and a sad, sad, detachment from everything that makes us human. What utter nonsense. History has been going on a lot longer than 1492. Cultures and ethnic groups have changed immensely. There’s nothing special about the cultural divisions that existed in 1798 in a sliver of one country that will make them last forever.
I’m done with you.
I’m not talking about the Caucasian/Negroid/Mongoloid designations.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I basically just thought that if if you weren’t black or Latino, then you defaulted to “white.” I just saw various Asian groups as being ethnicities within the “white” category, even though East Asians were obviously racially dissimilar.
I was born in 1971. By the time I got to school, textbooks and school presentations made a big deal about black/white differences, and to a large extent, about white/Latino differences. Seems like every kid in a textbook had a Leroy and a Juanita among his friends. You were supposed to like Leroy and Juanita even though they were different. The message was supposed to be positive, but it really emphasized the message “these people are NOT WHITE.”
So if Leroy and Juanita were most emphatically not white, then what were Sameer, Jen, and Masako? I can’t say I gave it a lot of thought. But since Indians, Filipinos, and Japanese weren’t included in the category of “people you’re supposed to like even though they aren’t white,” I guess I just figured they were “white.” After all, if they were not-white, wouldn’t someone be telling me that I was supposed to like them anyway?
Fast forward to college. For the first time, I heard Asians talking about themselves in a way that indicated that they didn’t consider themselves “white.” I actually remember saying to someone “What do you mean you’re not white?” She was like “I’m Chinese!” I was like “Yeah, so? What does that have to do with it?”
I obviously feel kind of stupid about that in retrospect, but it does give me hope that we may someday achieve a “colorblind society.”
Holy shit! That has got to be one of the most spectacularly ignorant comments I’ve ever seen on this message board! Wow!
Really? Why?
As I said, I am no buff either.
But it does affect you. Are there public facilities, schools, roads, highways, parks, exit ramps, rest stations, etc. named after Civil War Confederate heroes or battles in Virginia?
I strongly suspect there are, and many if not all of those names are within the power of the local or county level to change. Yet they persist, even in NoVa,
It would surprise me not in the least if Manassas or Vienna or someplace like that has a Robert E. Lee Park or School or Highway.
It would astound me to find the same names on the Maryland side of the river.
You are old enough to vote now (or will be very soon). If you want to really see people accept that NoVa does not care about Southern history and culture, why not start advocating locally that it is high time to change those names to something more appropriate to modern NoVa. Why not replace all references to Robert E. Lee with references to Steve Case or someone else equally responsible for the growth of the NoVa area in the last 20 years?
When that is done, then I think you will have made a very good start in eliminating a big cultural difference between NoVa and Montgomery County.
Be prepared for serious pushback if you ever even raise the issue in so much as a letter to the editor in a local newspaper though. You will shine a light on the underlying culture that is there under the shiny malls and office buildings that you can’t yet distinguish from those elsewhere.
Nobody “looks to it”. It just is, as part of our heritage. It is ingrained in our regional heritage.
Feel free to start a new thread somewhere if you want to talk about something not mentioned in the OP.
Instead of asking me to guess your definitions in your head and then yanking them away like a bull fight, why not simply make your case. I don;'t even know what point you are trying to make, and I strongly suspect you have forgotten too.
You might note that the OP was in fact persuaded by what I wrote, in case you are trying to ride his coattails.
So it is still applicable, or it is not? Let me know when it stopped being applicable, or when it will stop. I will ark my calendar
Phew! At last! Now we can get back to a more, shall we say, genteel, discussion.
Yeah, there are some. Most of them have boring names, though. I still don’t see how that actually affects me. It doesn’t make any difference to me whether I live on Nathan Bedford Forrest Road or Forest Whitaker Road.
Because here’s the thing: nobody cares. It doesn’t matter. People don’t make a fuss about driving on Lee Highway because, for one thing, it’s not terribly common knowledge that it’s named after Robert E. Lee, and because, honestly, very few people here give the slightest shit about what buildings and such are named.
Prepare to be astounded: There is.
Can you try to think of a handful of reasons our current life, wherever we live, is influenced by the events of the Civil War?
If you can’t think of any, maybe bring it up on the dorm floor tonight and report back what others say, make it sound like you are taking a poll instead of saying you can’t think of any yourself, but do you guys know…
BTW, I kinda think that might be item #2 should your roommate ever make a similar thread…hopefully we can nip that one in the bud right now!