# Who counts as a "Southerner"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 29, 2013, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540 "2013-08-29T23:04:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/221 "2013-09-12T03:22:25Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > As for your theory that identifying as American is purely a political statement…that _could_ be true, but why would it be so uniquely Southern? Is the political culture of the South _that_ different from Kansas or Oklahoma or Iowa? The thing is, as you say we are presumably talking about pluralities here. And in some cases they may be relatively small pluralities, with not a lot of distance between the highest and second highest ranked names. (I am on the Missouri side of the border, and I do notice there are a sprinkling of “American” counties near mine.) So since Southern whites are so overwhelmingly conservative (I’m not going to dig through all the poli-sci data to tell for sure, but I would bet money that if Mississippi’s white population voted the way Kansas’s white population does, Mississippi would be a blue state), that likely tips the plurality balance. > [@Shagnasty](#): > > Many Southerners have pure American lineages that go back 300 - 400 years and that is plenty of time to be considered a native to me. It was a shock when I moved to the Northeast and people my age still routinely had artifacts or even photos of their immigrant ancestors. There was no such thing where I grew up. But don’t many white Northeasterners have lineages that are just as long? I know when I did my family tree on [Ancestry.com](http://Ancestry.com), a lot of my forebears emigrated from England to Connecticut in the early-to-mid-1600s. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/222 "2013-09-12T04:09:48Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > But don’t many white Northeasterners have lineages that are just as long? I know when I did my family tree on [Ancestry.com](http://Ancestry.com), a lot of my forebears emigrated from England to Connecticut in the early-to-mid-1600s. There are some Northeasterners (among others) that trace much of of their lineage back to the Mayflower or similar settlements. The media calls them blue-bloods. I call them Johnny-come-Latelys because Jamestown and my people came over 20 years before that to form the oldest continuous English settlement in the New World. However, the history books tend to ignore that as much as possible because history is written by the victors and most of the publishers of American history books written after the Civil War were located in New England or New York so the whole story was revised in favor of the North. You don’t here much about the settlement of the U.S. or the role of the South in the Revolutionary War for example even though it was an integral part of the original 13 colonies. There is a big difference between your typical Mayflower descendant and many Southerners. Almost all Northeasterners have recent waves of newer immigrants in their immediate genealogy. There may be a few really old, relatively pure lineages in the rural areas of New England, New York or Pennsylvania but I have never met one and there is certainly not a large number of them. The families tended to mix with the newer waves of immigrants that flooded those areas over the decades and centuries. The same is’t true for the South. It operated as a semi-closed, agrarian society from the early 1600’s to the early 1900’s (and until the present day in parts) so there are plenty of people who still have roots that are pure to that region and can’t be traced back to anywhere any further. That phenomenon exists from Appalachia to rural Texas even today. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/223 "2013-09-12T10:49:23Z")
Shagnasty, let’s not exaggerate. You’re not a 15th-generation American. You’re probably something like a 10th-generation American. My ancestors probably emigrated to the U.S. between 1750 and 1900. I’m probably something like a 4th- to 7th-generation American, depending which ancestor you count. Furthermore, there was a big shift between the 1980 census, in which people in the South did call themselves English, Scots-Irish, Scottish, or Welsh on the census form, to 2000 census, when a lot of them suddenly started calling themselves “American” in answer to the same question on the census form. This shift mostly happened in the South. If you look at the county-by-county map that I linked to, you can see that in 2000 there are still areas of the U.S. with counties of plurality-English ancestry in New England and around Utah. The decision to call oneself “American” for one’s ancestry only happened less than 30 years ago, and it only happened mostly in the South. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/224 "2013-09-12T12:12:19Z")
Ahhh…very revealing! ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/225 "2013-09-12T12:45:12Z")
I think I found another map which provides a pretty good line of demarcation: [Where do people say “Y’all”?](http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2013/7/2/b0fd7694-45e2-4fa9-9df6-0287ef364b80.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/226 "2013-09-12T12:51:55Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Furthermore, there was a big shift between the 1980 census, in which people in the South did call themselves English, Scots-Irish, Scottish, or Welsh on the census form, to 2000 census, when a lot of them suddenly started calling themselves “American” in answer to the same question on the census form. This shift mostly happened in the South. If you look at the county-by-county map that I linked to, you can see that in 2000 there are still areas of the U.S. with counties of plurality-English ancestry in New England and around Utah. The decision to call oneself “American” for one’s ancestry only happened less than 30 years ago, and it only happened mostly in the South. Cite? Do you have a comparable map for the 1980 census? > [@SlackerInc](#): > > The thing is, as you say we are presumably talking about pluralities here. And in some cases they may be relatively small pluralities, with not a lot of distance between the highest and second highest ranked names. (I am on the Missouri side of the border, and I do notice there are a sprinkling of “American” counties near mine.) So since Southern whites are so overwhelmingly conservative (I’m not going to dig through all the poli-sci data to tell for sure, but I would bet money that if Mississippi’s white population voted the way Kansas’s white population does, Mississippi would be a blue state), that likely tips the plurality balance. So, say it’s a rural Kansas county that went overwhelmingly for Romney in '12. Let’s go with [Wallace County](http://www.politico.com/2012-election/results/president/kansas/), where Romney won 89.9% of the vote. Why isn’t Wallace County plurality “American”? ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/227 "2013-09-12T12:52:53Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Ahhh…very revealing! Exactly what does it reveal? Besides the fact that “Southerner” means ignorant white racist who lives in the southern part of the USA? What is your point? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/228 "2013-09-12T13:01:33Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > So, say it’s a rural Kansas county that went overwhelmingly for Romney in '12. Let’s go with [Wallace County](http://www.politico.com/2012-election/results/president/kansas/), where Romney won 89.9% of the vote. Why isn’t Wallace County plurality “American”? That region was Republican back when the Solid South was Democratic (before Southern whites fled the party to be sure to stay on the opposite side from blacks) . They are traditional, quietly conservative farmer type Republicans, not xenophobic, redneck, racist jackass Republicans. That is my unscientific take on it. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/229 "2013-09-12T13:18:00Z")
I’m inclined to agree with **Shagnasty**. I think most white Southerners just don’t know their ethnicity. I didn’t, until I started doing the research. Shagnasty was exaggerating about the number of generations, but only by a bit. I have several lines that go back at least 10 generations. Who keeps track of foreign roots that long? And even if you asked me now to narrow it down to one ethnicity, I couldn’t. It’s a mix of English, Irish, Ulster Scots, Germans, Native American, and who-knows-what-else. For white Southerners who haven’t done the research (_i.e._, most of them) their ancestral roots are lost in the mists of time. Our immigration simply wasn’t as recent as that in the North. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/230 "2013-09-12T13:20:30Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > That region was Republican back when the Solid South was Democratic (before Southern whites fled the party to be sure to stay on the opposite side from blacks) . They are traditional, quietly conservative farmer type Republicans, not xenophobic, redneck, racist jackass Republicans. That is my unscientific take on it. 😉 Yeah… It’s a good thing you’re not bigoted. Unlike those awful “Southerners.” ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/231 "2013-09-12T13:35:30Z")
It sure is! You got that right. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/232 "2013-09-12T14:07:33Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > That region was Republican back when the Solid South was Democratic (before Southern whites fled the party to be sure to stay on the opposite side from blacks) . They are traditional, quietly conservative farmer type Republicans, not xenophobic, redneck, racist jackass Republicans. That is my unscientific take on it. 😉 I’m sure you can articulate, and document, the important differences between the beliefs of Republican Kansans and Republican Southerners, right?. Otherwise, the above is just special pleading mixed with bigotry. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/233 "2013-09-12T15:07:03Z")
Do we have to document things on IMHO? ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/234 "2013-09-12T15:28:10Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Do we have to document things on IMHO? You don’t _have_ to document them anywhere, but it’s a good idea if you want to a) make sure your opinions of objective matters are based in fact and b) convince others of the same. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/235 "2013-09-13T01:25:11Z")
The percentage of people claiming English (and Scottish and Scots-Irish and Welsh) ancestry on the census dropped greatly from 1980 to 2000: > **[British Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_American#1980_Census)** > > Self-reported: > Including all British responses\[a\] and "Scotch-Irish": > 39,834,650 (12.0%) alone or in combination > 19,037,139 (5.7%) British alone > Including all British responses: > 37,969,018 (11.4%) alone or in combination > 17,425,620 (5.3%) British alone > Including only "British": > 1,139,403 (0.3%) alone or in combination > 515,251 (0.2%) "British" alone > British American usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales,... ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/236 "2013-09-13T12:25:36Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The percentage of people claiming English (and Scottish and Scots-Irish and Welsh) ancestry on the census dropped greatly from 1980 to 2000: > > [British Americans - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_American#1980_Census) Right, but how do you know that this change was confined to the South? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/237 "2013-09-13T14:20:15Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > I’m inclined to agree with **Shagnasty**. I think most white Southerners just don’t know their ethnicity. I didn’t, until I started doing the research. Shagnasty was exaggerating about the number of generations, but only by a bit. I have several lines that go back at least 10 generations. Who keeps track of foreign roots that long? I’m a 9th-generation American on my mother’s side. My McGuire ancestors immigrated to America via Baltimore circa 1710. We have the genealogical documentation reaching directly back to them. Of course, Baltimore is not exactly “South” South, even if it’s technically South. Perhaps our genealogy is better preserved because we moved to Pennsylvania early on? Maybe paper rots quicker under the hot, humid climatic conditions in the Southeast. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2013, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/238 "2013-09-13T14:27:29Z")
Specifically, my maternal grandmother kept in her possession papers handed down that were copied directly from her great-great-grandmother’s family Bible when that ancestor died in 1847, as my grandmother’s ancestor was not the eldest child and so had to preserve a copy instead of the original Bible. Her mother, the ancestor who’d kept the original Bible, was the granddaughter of the original McGuire immigrants from the early 18th century. My mother now has the 1847 papers, and she gave me photographs of them. Is it so unusual to preserve family records this long? Or is it just unusual down South? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540.md?page=11)