# 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:** 6
**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, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/101 "2013-09-01T22:58:53Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > “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”. You haven’t touched upon culture at all; you’ve only condemned Southern politics, which is a small part of culture. This makes the appearance that you’re only interested in honing a stereotype to demean your political opponents all the stronger. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > 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? Relative to whom? Pluralities, racial or otherwise, in other states? Given that the Democrats had a majority in the Mississippi House of Representatives from Reconstruction until 2011, and the Senate has changed hands 4 times since 2003, I’d say “often enough”. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > 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. Already answered. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > 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. That doesn’t describe Mississippi. ---
**Author:** ![Girlundone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/919ad9/32.png) [@Girlundone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Girlundone)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/102 "2013-09-02T00:31:57Z")
Florida is not southern? How do you figure? In my area we say ya’ll and eat hoppin john and grits. While we are a very transient state, the native Floridians I know (especially those families that go back several generations) would be considered southern in every sense of the word. ---
**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 2, 2013, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/103 "2013-09-02T02:14:57Z")
> [@Girlundone](#): > > Florida is not southern? How do you figure? In my area we say ya’ll and eat hoppin john and grits. While we are a very transient state, the native Floridians I know (especially those families that go back several generations) would be considered southern in every sense of the word. And you fought for The Cause, even though you had silly uniforms…or was that Louisiana? 🙂 ---
**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 2, 2013, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/104 "2013-09-02T02:35:50Z")
And what area of Florida do you live in, Girlundone? Have you been reading the posts at all carefully? We’ve made it clear that it’s only the southern part of Florida that’s not part of the South. ---
**Author:** ![Girlundone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/919ad9/32.png) [@Girlundone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Girlundone)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/105 "2013-09-02T02:47:54Z")
> [@](#): > > And you fought for The Cause, even though you had silly uniforms…or was that Louisiana? What’s silly is people still wearing the confederate flag on their clothing or as a truck ornament. You see that a lot here in (the not considered South) Florida. ---
**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 2, 2013, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/106 "2013-09-02T02:49:03Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > And what area of Florida do you live in, Girlundone? Have you been reading the posts at all carefully? We’ve made it clear that it’s only the southern part of Florida that’s not part of the South. Man, [Travis McGee](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_McGee) is going to kick your ass! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Girlundone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/919ad9/32.png) [@Girlundone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Girlundone)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/107 "2013-09-02T03:01:27Z")
> [@](#): > > And what area of Florida do you live in, Girlundone? Have you been reading the posts at all carefully? We’ve made it clear that it’s only the southern part of Florida that’s not part of the South. Well, Gee, Wendell Wagner, thanks for making that clear. I happen to live in South Florida, and it has a strong southern culture. Have you ever been here? [The Florida Cracker Trail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Cracker_Trail)runs through my town, far south of the panhandle. Last I checked, cracker culture was considered “southern”. How in the hell do you figure that “its only the southern part of Florida that’s not part of the South?” ---
**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 2, 2013, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/108 "2013-09-02T03:03:34Z")
> [@Girlundone](#): > > What’s silly is people still wearing the confederate flag on their clothing or as a truck ornament. You see that a lot here in (the not considered South) Florida. Chill out. You’re gonna bust something. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/109 "2013-09-02T03:05:25Z")
> [@bump](#): > > 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. _Maybe_, say, the El Paso area but not where I grew up. It had more in common with Hell. Flat, ugly. I was born in the true West and also lived in the Southwest, and where I grew up in West Texas was just about the worst place in the world my father could have moved us. To it’s credit though is that while the town was heavily segregated and discrimination openly existed, there was no Ku Klux Klan. While the only Klansman I ever met was in that town, one night in a local dive, he was there only because he had been paroled to there. Originally, he was from East Texas. ---
**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 2, 2013, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/110 "2013-09-02T03:12:10Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > It had more in common with Hell. Flat, ugly. At the tender age of eighteen, I drove Mama Plant from Little Rock, Arkansas to a relative’s home in Texas. It is very flat. Cops can’t hide, they just park by the side of the freeway, and you see them from miles away. I had to slow down from ninety to fifty five in the Opel GT for hours at a time. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/111 "2013-09-02T05:30:04Z")
Only Americans could have a three page debate about who is or isn’t a “southerner” while discussing places that are not just way to the north of the equator but north of the Tropic of Cancer as well. I’m from the _actual_ deep south, below the Tropic of Capricorn, and you are **all** northerners to me. ---
**Author:** ![opossum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2bfe46/32.png) [@opossum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/opossum)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/112 "2013-09-02T06:13:22Z")
> [@Girlundone](#): > > Well, Gee, Wendell Wagner, thanks for making that clear. I happen to live in South Florida, and it has a strong southern culture. Have you ever been here? [The Florida Cracker Trail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Cracker_Trail)runs through my town, far south of the panhandle. Last I checked, cracker culture was considered “southern”. > > How in the hell do you figure that “its only the southern part of Florida that’s not part of the South?” Another Floridian checking in to say that Florida is very complicated. ShibbOleth had it right - not all Floridians are Southerners, but many are. There’s some correlation with geography, in that a Floridian from Lake City is probably more likely to also be a Southerner than a Floridian from Bradenton. A Floridian from Jacksonville’s Westside is more likely to be a Southerner than one from the Southside or the beaches. But don’t count on either. Attempts to map it will fail. It’s not much different from Texas or Oklahoma in that respect. ---
**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 2, 2013, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/113 "2013-09-02T12:59:22Z")
The Florida Cracker Trail runs from Bradenton to Fort Pierce. That means that it’s approximately the border between the part of Florida that is considered part of the South (the part north of the trail) and the part of Florida that is not considered part of the South (the part north of the trail). As I’ve pointed out in a previous post, none of the boundaries between the South and the rest of the U.S. are really precise ones. It’s more that the various regions of the U.S. blend into each other. carnivorousplant posted a link to the Wikipedia entry on Travis McGee. It appears that in those books McGee remembers his youth when a larger proportion of Florida was considered part of the South. Over the past century, the border between the part that can be considered part of the South and the part that can’t be considered part of the South has slowly moved north. And, yes, I once lived in Florida for three years. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/114 "2013-09-02T13:20:02Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > But I do wonder why you would think a child of Vietnamese immigrants, raised in Atlanta, would be “Southern”. Why wouldn’t they be? Has Atlanta moved to upstate New York? Another one for “the Floridian would depend on location, the others would be Southerner, unless any of them told me he viewed himself otherwise”. FTR, The Bestest Ex was made in Costa Rica, born in Miami, grew up in a ranch in Georgia and the fastest way we knew to rev him up was to call him a yankee; dude was Hispanic by origin but not by culture (he knew very little Spanish and insisted in hypercorrecting the few sentences he knew). ---
**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 2, 2013, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/115 "2013-09-02T13:45:32Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The Florida Cracker Trail runs from Bradenton to Fort Pierce. That means that it’s approximately the border between the part of Florida that is considered part of the South (the part north of the trail) and the part of Florida that is not considered part of the South (the part north of the trail). As I’ve pointed out in a previous post, none of the boundaries between the South and the rest of the U.S. are really precise ones. It’s more that the various regions of the U.S. blend into each other. > > carnivorousplant posted a link to the Wikipedia entry on Travis McGee. It appears that in those books McGee remembers his youth when a larger proportion of Florida was considered part of the South. Over the past century, the border between the part that can be considered part of the South and the part that can’t be considered part of the South has slowly moved north. > > And, yes, I once lived in Florida for three years. “Is considered” sounds awfully authoritative. Wouldn’t “some of us consider” be more accurate? The South is more diverse than many people realize. We come in all colors & most of us are nauseated by that Confederate crap–even some with rebels in the family tree. Houston has become a [multicultural city](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Houston) but also part of East Texas–which can be considered the Deep South. But we have longstanding links with Louisiana–whose French Catholic Cajun/Creole subcultures don’t fit the more simplistic models favored by the simple. (Bless their hearts.) ---
**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 2, 2013, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/116 "2013-09-02T13:53:17Z")
Bridget Burke writes: \> “Is considered” sounds awfully authoritative. Wouldn’t “some of us consider” be \> more accurate? You’re right, but it was hard to express that without making my post even harder to read. ---
**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 2, 2013, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/117 "2013-09-02T14:43:24Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > And, yes, I once lived in Florida for three years. Trav is still gonna kick your ass. 🙂 ---
**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 2, 2013, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/118 "2013-09-02T15:53:44Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Why wouldn’t they be? Has Atlanta moved to upstate New York? > > Another one for “the Floridian would depend on location, the others would be Southerner, unless any of them told me he viewed himself otherwise”. These strike me as somewhat contradictory. The only reason you could exempt some parts of Florida (which are, after all, more “southern” than the rest, if not “Southern”) is because people there do not share a culture and heritage with other Southerners. If a child of Vietnamese refugees grows up in a melting pot city like Atlanta, presumably spending a lot of time with other Vietnamese immigrants, why would he be Southern while the Jewish seniors in Boca Raton are not? ---
**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 2, 2013, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/119 "2013-09-02T16:19:41Z")
This is why it’s more useful to talk about a particular region as being “Southern” as opposed to individual people as being “Southerners.” What we think of a Southern culture is of course the average cultural attitudes of the population in an area, not the attitudes of every single individual. Of course there will always be outliers. It’s easier to figure out the area occupied by this Southern culture rather than worry about each person. ---
**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 2, 2013, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540/120 "2013-09-02T16:49:47Z")
I get what you are saying, but you don’t see any value in writing (in a novel or journalistic piece) “As a Southerner, Joe Schmoe had some trouble adjusting to the local culture in [non-Southern place], for instance [example]”? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-counts-as-a-southerner/667540.md?page=7)