I did, but it wasn’t meant to be a reflection of my own attitude, but rather an attempt to understand what it is that these Northern Kentuckians don’t want to be assoicated with.
It’s funny…the Northern Kentuckians don’t want to be associated with the rest of Kentucky (though they are clearly a part of it), and the Ohioans don’t want to be associated with any of Kentucky, (even the part of it that is clearly part of the Cincinnati metro area). And the OP seems highly invested in not being associated with the South, as well. I can see why Southerners get defensive about their culture, I truly can.
You know what? I don’t hate the South. At all. As I’ve already stated. I do not take offense when someone says that Northern Virginia is part of the South. I wouldn’t be offended if someone said it were part of the Midwest, either. But I don’t think either statement is accurate. That’s all.
Are you serious? Do you remember that Virginia was the state that went to the Supreme Court to preserve anti-miscegenation laws? That’s why there are no mixed-race marriages in Virginia today. Oh, wait. Things change.
This kind of hostile sarcasm says a lot about you than it does about anything else.
I can only speak for myself, but what really frosts my flakes is when people like TruCelt spew that crap. Mock Southern culture all you want, but get it RIGHT. Otherwise, you’re just exposing your own ignorance.
By the standards of the post I quoted, yes I do. Have you ever been there?
My college gf was from there, and while I grew up in NJ suburbs and had been to NY and Manhatten may times, that was an eye-opener. her parents, and most of the people there, can live as though they are in China and never leave the neighborhood their whole lives, and they can live without interacting in any language other then Chinese, or treating anyone that they encounter that doesn’t speak Chinese as anything other than a visitor or tourist.
How is that culturally part of America, North, South, East or West?
Historically, those lands were never part of the “South”, by the time they were inhabited by other than natives and functioning on their own, they were no longer part of Virginia.
But where I live now, there is an old Indian reservation just outside of town, and despite a hundred years or more of agriculture - you may have read of this area in The Grapes of Wrath, e.g., there is still a certain feel that is Native American somehow. Also, there is a certain feel that we are Oklahomish, even if you can’t see it or most people, several generations in, don’t get it. And you don;t have to look hard to find that John Muir himself passed through this area on the way to his favorite spots in the mountains above. That we have more suburban sprawl in this town now then Reston did when I interviewed there in the early 80s changes nothing about the pure character of the place.
And the same is true for NoVa - sprawl doesn’t erase or replace history.
I don’t doubt that.
But the OP posited that NoVa is not “part of the South” - it is and always will be. History can’t be erased, and locations can’t be changed.
I guess my thought about Northern Virginia is this: is it possible that “The South” is undergoing a cultural shift, or at least parts of it? Is Northern Virginia just lucky that they can slip into the actual North because they’re right on the border? I mean, you could say that Atlanta isn’t really part of the South anymore, either, as it’s had such a large influx of northerners, and it’s a large, cosmopolitan city, and that kind of thing. Does all that preclude it from being part of the South, despite it being surrounded by the actual South? Or is it that the Mason-Dixon line is slipping lower?
So which town or city in NY State Burlington hypothetically a suburb if? Syracuse? Utica? Buffalo? Somewhere else? I guess I don’t get your analogy to making a city a “suburb” of a msaller city or empty space that happens to be across the border of a state.
Sure, but it doesn’t affect its location, and denying its history doesn’t make it go away.
See the current kerfuffle about google and Japanese maps for a very good related example.
(1) The South and southern culture themselves have been changing, just like every cultural unit does.
(2) Pockets of the South that have attracted significant in-migration have changed even faster, the same way that pockets of the non-South have experienced significant changes
(3) The notional cultural border between North and South is blurring and moving.
(4) Mobility and mass culture are wearing down lots of regional differences. Cultural differences are much more likely to be tied to individuals than to geography.
But call me crazy, I had a different feeling driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Tucumcari NM, and Austin Texas and Compton in Los Angeles. The weight and evidence of history is everywhere. Having grown up in a small area ranging from suburban NJ to Baltimore, it was a surprise to me.
I get the sense that OP and some others are simply denying the history of their region for some reason, it is not that they are unaware of it despite it being paved over before they got there, they are actively denying it. And as I said before, that is sad to me. Why not learn from the trend of how a place moved from “cuturally unacceptable” (whatever that might mean to an individual) to “culturally acceptable”? I don’t get it.
The principal complaint about suburban sprawl is that it changes the character of a place.
Actually, history can be erased. But that’s beside the point
The topic under discussion is not the physical removal of one place to another, but a blurring and shifting of a cultural border, which is constantly happening all over the world as people move and culture changes.
You’re not crazy, but you’re fallaciously imposing your feelings on inanimate objects aand on other people, who very rightly might have contradictory feelings. These feelings are not inherent; they’re coming from you.
I’m not denying history. I’m saying that I’m not talking about history. I’m talking about the present and the present is very often different from history.
You can argue that the cultural border is blurring, but you can’t very well argue that it has moved, since the majority perception here is clearly that NoVa is still in the South.
Thus, it remains Southern by default, since it hasn’t actually left yet. It’s just packing its bags and saying its goodbyes.
This is not gd, so I don;'t want to get into it deeply here, but I’d say that this is only true at a very superficial level. I have lived in urban, suburban sprawl, and now rural areas from east to west. While some areas are similar on the surface, you don’t have to go too deep to find the differences in infrastructure or local culture. We do not live in Bland-ia USA unless we choose to look at it that way.
And I am confident, despite not having been there since the early 90s, that NoVa is not culturally the same below the thinnest veneer of the surface as Montgomery County in MD (or DC for that matter) despite being contiguous in every meaning of the word.
This is just shenanigans. It has blurred when a sufficient number of people believe it has blurred and it has moved when a sufficient larger number of people believe it has moved. My data point is the belief that has moved.
This thread is not a valid statistical sample
More semantic shenanigans. There’s no such thing as a “default” when you’re talking about perceptions.
And you’ve just validated my point. If you want to weasel-word it, that’s fine with me.
And as far as I can tell, nobody saying that has actually lived in Northern Virginia in the last ten or fifteen years. See, when you live somewhere for a while, you’re likely to have a more accurate perspective on what it’s like than someone who lived somewhere nearby more than a decade ago. Funny how that works.
There’s nothing really wrong with being in the South, you know. These days, they don’t even make you drive a pickup truck or fly a Confederate flag, and we have integrated lunch counters and everything!
I’d argue if that is the PRINCIPLE complaint, but it is among them, sure.
Change of the character of a place is inevitable, sprawl or not. The principle complaint would be, is sprawl the best choice to make (in advance or in retrospect)
It is not among the complaints that it changes the history or location of a place though.
No it is not besides the point. Why would one group in this thread not embrace their history as determining the threads and trends that got them where they are today, even if they love the current place (physically and culturally both)?
The OP doesn’t mention that.
I suspect it is lack of clarity of the terms in the OP’s mind compared to his or her roommate’s view of the same fuzzy concept that is being repeated here.
Let’s not pretend to define a discussion solely in terms that favor your position.
The issue is, the issue is fuzzy what we are talking about because the OP was unclear.
I am not imposing anything on anyone.
Are you really suggesting you can’t tell the difference in place or the sense of history if you are in “downtown” Tucumcari or Wall Street? Or any other two places you have ever been?
Maybe that is a certain kind of modernism that suggests that history is not relevant to the current time and place. I am not a historian, but I bet that is a common feeling among people in many places and many times. Doesn’t change the tides of history though, although it probably limits how people can benefit from the tide.