Hopeful 2011 SEC PNM from "The North"

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by blondieee3

It's actually pretty crazy that within the same state, you can go from big city "yankee" life, to tiny little farms with confederate flags.

The presence of absence of Confederate flags (itself a misnomer) is what defines an area as Southern?

Originally Posted by SthrnZeta

Sorry, ask anyone who's actually from NoVa and they would never say they are southerners. That area is such a modge podge of people, it just can't be called southern. Now, pass over the beltway into Prince William County and beyond, and then maybe I'd believe you.

I know plenty of people from NoVA who readily say they are Southerners, and with good reason because they are. I'm even related to some of them. I know also know plenty of people who live there but are not from there (to use a good old Southernism), who rightly say they are not Southern.

NoVA is Southern, the presence of an at times overwhelming number of non-Southerners living there notwithstanding. And I'd say that whenever a Southerner says NoVA (or Florida) isn't really Southern, that's what they mean -- that "too many" of the people living there aren't Southern.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

The presence of absence of Confederate flags (itself a misnomer) is what defines an area as Southern?

That belief is one reason why some NoVA people are trying to pretend they aren't part of VA and aren't southern. Why be from VA if you only see VA as the home of the confederacy; and why be southern if you have a narrow vision of what the south represents.

It's cool because there are farms with confederate flags in NoVA. At the end of the day, it is all the south and there are different levels of "southerness" depending on where you are in the south and the people who live there. Yes, a NoVA young lady who goes through recruitment at a school in a deeper part of the south may be seen as northern because she is "not as southern as....".

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

That belief is one reason why some NoVA people are trying to pretend they aren't part of VA and aren't southern. Why be from VA if you only see VA as the home of the confederacy; and why be southern if you have a narrow vision of what the south represents.

It's cool because there are farms with confederate flags in NoVA. At the end of the day, it is all the south and there are different levels of "southerness" depending on where you are in the south and the people who live there. Yes, a NoVA young lady who goes through recruitment at a school in a deeper part of the south may be seen as northern because she is "not as southern as....".

I agree. It's kin to the syndrome we see here at GC from time to time, where "Southern" seems to mean "my experience of Southern." The South is no more a monolith than any other region of the country, and Southern culture takes a wide variety of forms.