I prefer the term “Southern Transplant” over “carpet baggin’ damn Yankee”. Although I was born in Ohio, my Dad was born & raised in Southern Virginia, so I should get some kind of credit for that. 
And I love sweet tea with every fiber of my being. I’ve lived in South Carolina for six years now, I would like to ultimately end up in Georgia.
I think of Oklahoma and Texas as “Southwest” like New Mexico and Arizona. Missouri and Maryland aren’t Southern and Arkansas seems questionable.
Gotta love that “you ain’t one of us, boy, and you never will be” brand of Southern hospitality.
Is this the kind of stuff that people say about me behind my back after being polite to my face? 
I’m with you, sister; I’m originally from Jax. Well, actually Doctor’s Inlet, but we moved into the city, in the San Marco area, when I was pretty young. When people question my Southernness on hearing that I’m Floridian, all I have to do is point out that Lynyrd Skynyrd are from my hometown.
Anyway, I’m originally a Florida Cracker too, but have lived in Atlanta, Athens (college, of course), and now Memphis. I’ve left the South a few times (a couple years each in Kansas City, Boulder, Iowa, and Japan), but this really is where I feel most at home.
I don’t act stereotypically “Southern”; I don’t listen to country, don’t have much of an accent (Dad is Oregonian), have no interest in commemorating the Civil War. I do drive a pickup truck and eat grits (with Tabasco and cheese) and love love love SEC football. I generally think of myself as a progressive Southerner.
neutron star, don’t worry about it. I’ve never heard a Southerner say, “Well, so-and-so is OK, but you know he’s not from here.”
Born in Germany, lived in Georgia since '60, so hell, I don’t know where I fall in your description. I do know this: I consider Germany home.
So despite all of them y’all’s and hon’s, ahm still a Kraut.
Q
:dubious: Where in Arkansas have you been that isn’t southern? With the possible exception of parts of the Ozarks, which is rather like Appalachia…but that doesn’t make VA, NC, TN, SC or GA questionable…Is it that it’s west of the Mississippi?
I don’t want to have to tell my family and friends back in Arkansas people think they’re all yankees!:eek: 
Born on the Texas Gulf Coast. During a storm. In the dead of night.
Moved around a lot. CA, CO, KY, WI, IA…
Currently in the OKC. I’ve lived in Oklahoma for over 10 years now.
FTR, many Texans live in Oklahoma. But OK is not Southern, imho. It’s part of the MidWest. Oklahoma calls itself “The Heart of the Heartland.”
As for Florida… South Florida is NYC’s 5th bourrough. Longer Island.
My Daddy always told me, “Son, don’t ever ask a man where he’s from. If he’s from Texas, he’ll tell you. If he isn’t, you don’t want to embarrass the poor soul.”
I think Plnnr summed it up nicely.
'Nawlins born and still living in the deep south - although my racially mixed bag family attests to the fact that we’re not rednecks by any stretch of the imagination.
A funny thing happened this past weekend! I’m sure you’ve all heard the correlation between blacks, watermelon and fried chicken. Well, we’d bought Popeye’s chicken for lunch, had iced a watermelon down for the afternoon, and as it turned out my backyard is a magnet for my kids friends (my kids are black for those who don’t know). By 1ish there were about 10 or so youngens jumping on the trampoline, playing in the hosepipe, and playing kickball. Mr. Adoptamom walked out, saw the kids, asked who was hungry and all screamed “I am!”. Outside went the chicken, followed closely by the watermelon (those kids were hungry after all that hard playing!). He had to chuckle when he was walking back into the house and heard one of the boys whisper our son, “Are you SURE your folks are white? They don’t eat white!”
LOL!!
I knew I liked you for a reason, NoClueBoy!!
Oklahoma has some amazing hills!
People that claim not to be southern use this argument all the time. In fact it is how the subject comes up 90% of the time.
I was born outside of Dayton, OH and lived there until I was 9 years old. My family then moved to a suburb of Atlanta in 1947 (not to be confused with the city of the same name and location today). I learned two things:
[ul][li] it was better to become a southerner than a damn yankee.[/li][li] that I could never become a true southerner, because of where I was born.[/ul][/li]I married a gal from Leeds, AL and learned to like grits and hush puppies. After moving to Cincinnati, OH for 11 years, I moved to Mississippi and have lived here for nearly 30 years. I like to say that I was a yankee until I was old enough to know better.
[ul]:mad: [sup]The worst thing about being a yankee living in the south is other yankees that like to shoot off their big mouths.[/sup][/ul]
Yes!
A lot of this is state is awesomely beautiful. Different from the Texas Hill Country. (Where God vacations.) But, still gorgeous in it’s own way.
I’m a Yankee, but I’m not a damnyankee. I understand they’re two different things. I’ve always felt I belonged to the South far more than to the land of my birth. My best friend made us both bumper stickers kinda taking off on those “Southern by the Grace of God” things, that said “American by Birth, Northern Because Somebody Hates Us.”
Of course, no matter how long I live down here, I’m always going to be a Yankee. It’s just that eventually, people - including myself - might forget to bring it up. Then again, whenever I go back up to where my folks live, I’ll be “the one from Texas.” So I kinda get to be both, but never really belong.
Southern is the damn SEC. The ACC is some kinda east-coast thing. Also, the four corners is about the worst thing to ever happen to college basketball. Also, Duke sucks.
Jefferson Davis is from my hometown. Of course, Lincoln’s from right up the road a piece…
I was born and raised here in Nashville, lived here all my life. Every bit of family I have alive now lives within 50 miles of here, and have for at least the last 4 generations. Back 13 generations or so My g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g- great grandaddy stepped off the boat from England into Jamestown Viriginia, he was the first Southerner in my family. My ancestors didn’t stick around Viriginia long (being poor) and before long they ended up in middle and eastern TN which is where we’ve been ever since. My paternal grandmother was a yankee, she was born and raised in New York City, met my grandfather while he was in the Navy fighting in WWII. When my grandfather went back home and told my great grandma that he met my grandmother she said 'You ain’t a gonna marry that foreigner are you?" :>.
I spent my childhood by the banks of the Cumberland river, down the street from the Grand Ole Opry. I sucked on honeysuckle and played hooky with my dad to catch catfish and swim in the lake. I had an old dog who wasn’t good for anything and went barefoot everywhere unless I couldn’t help it. My granny taught me to make biscuits and blackberry cobbler. I learned to drive on a pickup truck. I like my tea sweet and my vegetables well cooked. I say Yessir and Nossir and Yes Ma’am and No Ma’am even though with all the transplants here now I get dirty looks sometimes.
I guess it runs in the family, I married a woman from New York (upstate though)… met her online of all things… I love her very much and would happily die for her, knew that almost right from the start. I told her early on that I’ll never move away from here. She moved here, for which I am gratefull every day, but I told her the truth. I’m a Southerner and always will be.
Well, thanks, but some of the stuff in this thread does leave me wondering. I mean, what makes a Southerner a Southerner? Is it a combination of things? I’m genuinely curious about this and not trying flame or anything. Sorry if I sounded snarky in my last post.
If someone moves down here when he’s two weeks old and lives his whole life here, he’s been exposed to the culture, food, land, and people just as much as any other Southerner. What makes him any less “real?” Does one have to have a great-great grandpappy who fought in the Civil War? What about those whose ancestors moved here two generations ago? What about those whose ancestors moved down during Reconstruction? Or are you a Southerner if your Northern parents rush down to Georgia a week before they give birth to you and you end up living there?
By the same token, if a child is born in the South to a Southern family but moves to 5th Avenue in New York City when he’s two and spends the rest of his life there, how is he more of a Southerner than the person who moved South at the age of two weeks and spent his whole life enjoying the region?
Or is Southern-ness, as some in this thread have said, simply a state of mind? If so, could someone elaborate on that?
Sorry if any of this sounds stupid, but I really am curious.
[aside] In Penn State country we had bumper stickers similar to the ones you guys are mentioning. They said “American by birth, Nittany Lion by the grace of God.” [/aside]
Mama was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Daddy was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I was born in Houston, Texas and I’ve been here ever since.
Yankees come down here, damn yankees stay.
unclviny
Pssst…you’ll hurt their feelings. They like to call them “mountains”…
I offer another vote for “Oklahoma—more of a midwestern state”, especially as far as Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Most other parts are hard to differentiate from the “true South”, as I know it.
I have to admit that I often disagree with the predominant right, but I do enjoy the atmosphere and attitude in general. I could certainly do without the god-awful weather, but the sunsets are unequaled.
neutron star, you quoted a line from my OP and apparently read the part you wanted to see. What I said (with my bolding added so the point is more evident, hopefully) was:
“And those people who were born and grew up elsewhere and then moved to the South for economical reasons are not Southerners.”
Now, you can continue to look for the briar on the rose and the stink on the skunk if you prefer. You can carry a chip on your shoulder if it helps you walk better. But if you’d give folks the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming they hate you because you’re not a natural-born Southerner, you might find it easier to get on with your life.
To clarify further, if you were born elsewhere and were moved to the South by parents who cared for you, you’re not doomed to be a non-Southerner. You can fix that by keeping your nose in the proper location so your eyes can see over it. You can look around at the fortunates who did happen to be born here and try to pick up on what they see that you don’t.
The “state of mind” some have mentioned is the ability to let shit roll off your back when it doesn’t do any harm to. Smiling when things aren’t as funny as you like, but still not enough to make you feel like fighting, is a way of understanding that not everybody is out to get you and that they may even like you. Being polite to other people is a way of easing tensions. Walking into a place with the attitude that you can whip anybody in it is liable to get you whipped, unless you’re the biggest and meanest S.O.B. for miles around and just love fighting for its own sake. You may win lots of fights but you won’t make lots of friends, if friends are what you’re after.
Seeing the pleasant side of a situation is a key to being Southern. It’s not hard to do if you set your mind to it.
The whole point to this thread was to give Southerners an opportuinity to speak out and to identify themselves. That other stuff about what constitutes being Southern was just a point of curiosity of mine. I have my own opinions on that, and expressed them, but I wonder how my view squares with others, not that it’s any big deal.
I don’t wish harm to non-Southerners. I don’t consider non-Southerners inferior or second-class or anything beyond the obvious fact that they are from other places in the world. Nor do I consider Southerners special or privileged beyond the obvious fact that they/we are from an area of the USA that has beautiful scenery, tolerable weather, good food, a fun-loving culture, and a pride of heritage. People who didn’t spend their childhoods in the South might have had equally fun times and equally fascinating stories about those days. And not every Southerner had those Happy Days to brag about. But many do, and I thought this would provide a thread to do some bragging.
One thing I do notice a lot about Southerners. We take a lot of shit from non-Southerners. Somehow the rest of the country considers us stupid, slow, dirty, immoral, inbred, prejudiced, backward, lazy, unable to keep pace, and all sorts of things that are just plain wrong. It gets tiresome to have to deal with that stigma before you say or do anything. If truth be known, this SDMB’s Southerners (I’m learning as I watch and read) are as clever and as educated and as broad-minded as anybody else. And I just wanted us to have the opportunity to say so.
Now, what else was it you were curious about?
Well, neutron star, I’ve lived in LA all my life, and my definition of a Southerner is really not strict. I don’t think it has much to do with where you’re born. If you’ve lived here long enough to understand most of the colloquialisms and you consider yourself southern, that’s good enough for me. I can’t imagine ever hearing someone describe himself as southern, only to smugly think to myself, “Who does he think he’s kidding?”
If they say Cajun, however, that’s a whole different story.
Born in Victoria, TX.
Lived in Yorktown, TX for one year.
Lived in Austin, TX for 12 years.
Lived in San Antonio, TX for 9 years.
I’d consider myself a Southerner, as would most folks. I’d agree that everything west of Texas isn’t the South. Neither is Southern Florida. I never thought of Virginia, Oklahoma, or Kentucky as Southern.
Born in Arkansas, moved to Georgia, back to Arkansas, back to Georgia, then to North Kackalackee. I’m a southern mutt.
I consider Texas and Oklahoma to be the west, not the south, but they are still family. We may fight with each other, but we’ll team up in a heartbeat to go up agin’ ever body else.
The South isn’t necessarily defined by state borders. I do consider some parts of Maryland and Missouri to be Southern. South Florida is not part of the south. It broke off from New York, left a strip of real estate called Lawn Guy Land, and attached itself to Georgia.
What makes one a Southerner? Good question. You can’t define it in precise terms like a grocery list. It’s best to say that you understand it without having to define it or question it. Here’s an example:
My friend Chris is originally from New Jersey. He’s a feisty little Italian guy. He moved down south to attend school at Duke and stayed here ever since. He says that since he’s lived in the south longer than the north, that he’s now a Southerner. Wrong.
We went to a BBQ place with my coworker Nikki, who’s a native Southerner. I told them a joke. I said I went to eat at this one place and I knew it was a Southern diner when the waittress told me “Honey, I didn’t have enough sugar for your tea so I stirred it with my finger.”
Nikki laughed. Chris went pale and bug-eyed and said “Omigod! That’s disgusting! Did you report her to the health department?” I said “See? Southerners laugh at that joke. Yankees get grossed out. That’s why you’ll never be a Southerner.”