# 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:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2013, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/81 "2013-09-01T17:38:37Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > You wish. (Plenty of “Yankee” states never voted for Bush.) Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, were lynched in the town center of Marion, Indiana. The [KKK was active Maine government](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan_in_Maine#Maine_and_the_Klan_Revival_of_the_1920s) during the 1920’s. There are racists in every state/ ---
**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 1, 2013, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/82 "2013-09-01T18:09:43Z")
Indeed, states are not 100% homogenous and uniform in their populations and culture. Any state, with hundreds of thousands or millions of residents, is going to have at least a few people of nearly every type. Frankly, though, that is a banal and irrelevant observation. The fact still remains that some states have a history in modern times and living memory of pushing toward progress and others have a track record of resisting it. The vast majority of white Mississippians seem hellbent on fighting tooth and nail against modernity; but then they whine that they are being “stereotyped” when anyone else points this out. Can’t have it both ways, guys. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2013, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/83 "2013-09-01T18:31:26Z")
**SlackerInc** , it sounds like you are trying to create some sort of proscriptive definition based on your own stereotypes: “Nope, sorry, you aren’t a ‘Southerner’ because you don’t fit the idea of a Southerner I have in my head.” ---
**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 1, 2013, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/84 "2013-09-01T18:38:43Z")
[QUOTE=SlackerInc] Do we insist on having a regional/cultural name for everyone? What about people from, say, Nevada? How about Delaware? [/quote] Just the ones where multiple states have commonalities that make a regional name useful. “New Englander”, or “Yankee”, for instance, or the Sun Belt or Rust Belt. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > Good point. It’s really not. Some people from the South have a drawl, other’s don’t. That’s not what makes them Southern, being from the South is what makes them Southern. Let go of the stereotypes already. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > As \*\*monstro \*\*said, you can’t exclude all Floridians from “Southerner” status. But I do wonder why you would think a child of Vietnamese immigrants, raised in Atlanta, would be “Southern”. Is this just a Florida-excluding variant of the (IMO facile) answer that it is anyone who was born in raised in the South? Yet we have someone posting in this thread who was born and raised in Mississippi and does not consider herself a “Southerner”. (I spent most of my childhood, starting from before I can remember, in Chapel Hill but certainly never considered myself one.) Being from the South is what makes them Southern. You are a Southerner too. The only think that gives you pause about it is all the stereotypical baggage you’ve attached to the term. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > Like **BrainGlutton** , I did not expect African Americans to call themselves “Southerners” (as opposed to “Southern”). But the cite provided has caused me to reconsider. I still wonder how they would be described by journalists though. Depends on how attached to stereotypes the individual journalist is. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > ETA: > > But let’s be real: the state is actually run by white people who get voted heavily against by that large black population. Basically, every time there’s an election for state government, the black population issues their “no confidence” vote but they just get outvoted by an impressive level of white solidarity. So I can’t think they are really happy with that state of affairs. Also “run by white people” - every state in the Union. 28% of Mississippi’s state legislators are African American (as of [2009](http://allotherpersons.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/factoid-black-state-legislators-in-2009/)), the highest figure in the country. 9 states had 0…how happy are their African American residents with _that_ state of affairs? > [@SlackerInc](#): > > The fact still remains that some states have a history in modern times and living memory of pushing toward progress and others have a track record of resisting it. The vast majority of white Mississippians seem hellbent on fighting tooth and nail against modernity; but then they whine that they are being “stereotyped” when anyone else points this out. Can’t have it both ways, guys. Maybe the flaw in your thinking is deciding that “progress” and “modernity” means voting Democrat, and that everyone else agrees with you on that. ---
**Author:** ![miss\_elizabeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@miss\_elizabeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/miss_elizabeth)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2013, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/85 "2013-09-01T19:06:41Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > You wish. (Plenty of “Yankee” states never voted for Bush.) > > If Bush ever got a Reagan '84 or Nixon '72 type blowout you might have a bit more of a point. But no. You can keep trying to pretend like Mississippi can just blend into the rest of the country on these things, but the facts are against you. > > Speaking of blowouts, LBJ racked up a huge blowout win nationally against Goldwater, but in Mississippi he got 12 percent of the vote. Johnson also lost Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana, but he at least got over 40% in each state. Mississippi is clearly a special, special place, even within the Deep South. > > Then there’s Trent Lott, who had to resign his Majority Leader position because he harkened fondly back to segregation; but Mississippians kept voting him back in. > > In Virginia, a “Macaca” crack was enough to torpedo a rising star’s career. In Mississippi, Haley Barbour can say all kinds of [fucked up racist shit](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/12/20/haley-barbours-praise-of-citizen-councils-stirs-debate-about-racism.html)and keep getting reelected. You are exactly the embodiment of what I was talking about. In your zeal to paint yourself as “progressive” you’ll slur an entire state, full of all different kinds of people, never realizing _you are guilty of that which you’re trying to judge Mississippi for_. But whatever dude. You’re the expert on who’s Southern, and what we’re all like. Whether we’ll admit it or not. :rolleyes: Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go lynch some folk before I go sip mint juleps on the patio with Trent Lott. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2013, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/86 "2013-09-01T19:12:28Z")
Southerner is both a cultural thing and a geographic thing, strictly speaking **Human Action** is correct anyone who is from the “South” is a “Southerner.” But most people are talking about a cultural identifier when they use the term. For that reason I’d say it’s more about self-identification. Southern Florida doesn’t have the “Southern” cultural feel, but parts of Florida do. For that reason I say whichever Floridians want to call themselves Southerners, are Southerners. Living where they do they understand what they’re talking about, and they know if they’re Southerners better than anyone else. Maybe they live outside Miami or Palm Beach but if they grew up on the border with Georgia they might view themselves as Southerners and so might other Southerners in other states. The term New Yorker is similar, it is both a strict geographical identifier but also a cultural term. Imagine a kid who grew up in Texas, went to college at UT and graduated and got a job in NYC. He lives there for ten years working, but never identifies with any of the New York cultural scene and hardly participates in any of the many NYC rituals. Every free chance he gets he’s on a plane back to Texas, and he only watches Texas sports teams and etc. After the ten years is up, he finds a job in Texas and moves back there, never returning to NYC even for a vacation to visit people he had met there. Was that guy ever a New Yorker? In a strict sense yes, but culturally probably not. The same can be true even for someone who was say, born in the South but deliberately chose to not be a part of the “Southern” culture. ---
**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 1, 2013, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/87 "2013-09-01T19:22:08Z")
Human Action writes: \> 28% of Mississippi’s state legislators are African American (as of 2009), the \> highest figure in the country. 9 states had 0…how happy are their African \> American residents with that state of affairs? Yes, 28.7% of the Mississippi legislature is black, but that’s still underrepresented, since 37.2% of the population is black. 0.0% of the Montana legislation is black, but only 0.6% of the population is black. So blacks are underrepresented there too. Look through the table carefully. Only in seven of the fifty states is the black population overrepresented in the legislature. The degree to which the black population is underrepresented in the legislature is probably a better sign of what influence blacks have in the state than the raw amount of representation itself. Blacks are underrepresented in most states - not generally by a huge amount - but they are mostly underrepresented. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2013, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/88 "2013-09-01T19:23:59Z")
I don’t really know that “the degree to which the black population is underrepresented in the legislature” serves as a “better sign of what influence blacks have in the state.” That doesn’t necessarily make any sense, legislative districts because of how they are drawn can never have a group perfectly represented. You need some sort of proportional representation system for that to happen, or get closer to happening. Plus, blacks believe it or not do sometimes vote for white politicians over black ones. ---
**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 1, 2013, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/89 "2013-09-01T19:28:59Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > **SlackerInc** , it sounds like you are trying to create some sort of proscriptive definition based on your own stereotypes: “Stereotype” is a slippery word. I would argue that the word “Southerner” is a cultural characterisation. For me, it is negative, yes. But we have heard from more than one proud Southerner that it is not just a catchall for people who live, or used to live, in a certain region. At least a couple people have laid it out as a type of cultural identity or way of life. And that is my main point: whether you think it is a desirable label or not, I don’t believe it is understood by most people as anything so anodyne as “this person has lived most of their life within the borders of the following states, or within an area bounded by X latitude and Y longitude”. > [@Human\_Action](#): > > 28% of Mississippi’s state legislators are African American (as of [2009](http://allotherpersons.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/factoid-black-state-legislators-in-2009/)), the highest figure in the country. 9 states had 0…how happy are their African American residents with _that_ state of affairs? Nice spin, but how often do those 28% get the bills they want passed, and signed by the governor? Conversely, how often do they vote nay on the stuff that does get passed? ---
**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 1, 2013, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/90 "2013-09-01T19:34:06Z")
The fact that blacks are consistently underrepresented does prove something. If the number of states in which blacks were underrepresented and overrepresented were approximately equal, that would prove that blacks have just as much power as whites (relative to their proportion in the population). In fact, they are mostly underrepresented, although not by a huge amount. Before it was decided that a reasonable amount of districts in each state have to be majority or close to majority black, blacks were indeed hugely underrepresented in the legislatures. The only reason that blacks are now anywhere close to being reasonably represented in the legislatures was that decision to force there being majority-black districts. ---
**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 1, 2013, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/91 "2013-09-01T19:41:51Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Southerner is both a cultural thing and a geographic thing, strictly speaking **Human Action** is correct anyone who is from the “South” is a “Southerner.” But most people are talking about a cultural identifier when they use the term. And that’s a bad thing, frankly, as ably demonstrated by this thread, and the one it spun off of, as it’s used to facilitate slandering a whole region, by treating large portions of that that don’t conform to stereotype (non-whites and non-conservatives, for instance) as if they don’t exist. > [@Martin Hyde](#): > > For that reason I’d say it’s more about self-identification. Even then, defining the word as just referring to _white_ Southerners is still completely divorced from reality. > [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > Yes, 28.7% of the Mississippi legislature is black, but that’s still underrepresented, since 37.2% of the population is black. 0.0% of the Montana legislation is black, but only 0.6% of the population is black. So blacks are underrepresented there too. Look through the table carefully. Only in seven of the fifty states is the black population overrepresented in the legislature. The degree to which the black population is underrepresented in the legislature is probably a better sign of what influence blacks have in the state than the raw amount of representation itself. Blacks are underrepresented in most states - not generally by a huge amount - but they are mostly underrepresented. **SlackerInc** disparaged Mississippi on the basis that it was “run by white people”. Not only is that true of every state, Mississippi is a poor example of it, because African Americans there do have a large portion of political power. I also question the idea that underrepresentation is a better measure of influence then, well, _influence_ itself is. ---
**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 1, 2013, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/92 "2013-09-01T20:08:21Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The only reason that blacks are now anywhere close to being reasonably represented in the legislatures was that decision to force there being majority-black districts. Majority-minority districts are the biggest scam ever. They massively dilute the political power of minorities. > [@Human\_Action](#): > > Mississippi is a poor example of it, because African Americans there do have a large portion of political power. Really? What governor has the state ever had that was not staunchly opposed by the vast, vast majority of African-Americans? By contrast, even here in Missouri (becoming more Southern-ish each year) we currently have a governor who got the majority of the state’s black vote. Same in my former state of Minnesota. There’s a huge difference between a state being run by white people that get black votes, and being run by white people that the large black population vehemently opposes but cannot defeat even for the occasional term here or there. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2013, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/93 "2013-09-01T20:24:47Z")
**SlackerInc** please provide some numbers showing what portion of blacks voted for each of the last four Mississippi Governors to evidence this idea that only governors they “massively oppose” get elected. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2013, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/94 "2013-09-01T20:29:41Z")
I’ll go ahead and answer that Ronnie Musgrove received over 90% of the black vote in 2000 (white governor.) I couldn’t find exit polling data for elections earlier than that, and I suspect you were just talking out of your ass so I’m sure you don’t have such data either. But Musgrove’s mere existence answers your question as to what Governor has Mississippi elected that wasn’t opposed by the black population. I’d wager all of the Democratic governors of Mississippi from 1980-2013 probably had substantial black voter support, as that was after the “shift” in Southern politics where blacks transitioned from all voting Republican to all voting Democrat. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2013, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/95 "2013-09-01T21:04:07Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The only reason that blacks are now anywhere close to being reasonably represented in the legislatures was that decision to force there being majority-black districts. That is[Gerrymandering.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering) ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2013, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/96 "2013-09-01T21:23:26Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > One thing we never ever had in West Texas was grits. No one ate grits, no restaurant served them, I never noticed them in the store. And I’ve heard that an informal measure of the “true South” is the pervasion of grits. I always had the impression that West Texans might have more in common with the Western states than East Texas, and that East Texas might well have more in common with the South than West Texas. ---
**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 1, 2013, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/97 "2013-09-01T21:24:42Z")
Yes, and the fact is that up to the point that they began gerrymandering the legislative districts, blacks were massively underrepresented in the legislatures. ---
**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 1, 2013, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/98 "2013-09-01T21:26:42Z")
bump writes: \> I always had the impression that West Texans might have more in common with \> the Western states than East Texas, and that East Texas might well have more \> in common with the South than West Texas. Which is precisely what the map in _The Nine Nations of North America_ says: > **[The Nine Nations of North America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_America)** > > The Nine Nations of North America is a 1981 book by Joel Garreau, in which the author suggests that North America can be divided into nine nations, which have distinctive economic and cultural features. He also argues that conventional national and state borders are largely artificial and irrelevant, and that his "nations" provide a more accurate way of understanding the true nature of North American society. The work has been called "a classic text on the current regionalization of North America... ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2013, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/99 "2013-09-01T21:37:28Z")
I didnt read all the posts, but i just wanted to say if you group people from hawaii with southerners from the US, they’d laugh in your face if not beat you over the head with a history book. My definition is states that were part of the confederacy during the us civil war. ---
**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 1, 2013, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/100 "2013-09-01T21:56:27Z")
“States that were part of the Confederacy” is close, but it’s not exactly right either. Why are you talking about Hawaii? No one here has mentioned it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540.md?page=6)