I think there's also an unfair aspect of which state typifies "Southern Culture" the most because like ... it seems to be exclusively "Southern Culture" from a non-Southern perspective, which is often just "Southern White Culture." When we answer these questions and make assumptions about the South, white people often just erase black people from the idea of it... and yet the states that white non-southerners usually group as "The most southern states," and all of the cultural/historical baggage that entails, are also usually the blackest states in the country.
It's one of the reasons I hate the recurring "Should the Northeast secede from the US/South?" polls that pop up frequently. It's like, "aah, yes, let's just leave the 30% of Alabamans who are non white to the new confederacy." In the last "should Democratic states secede" thread, someone unironically made the argument that non-white people, minorities, women under threat, etc, can eventually "just leave" and move to a liberal northern state eventually. WHich is so fucking ignorant of history, and you saw identical arguments/comments made during Reconstruction, "Why don't the blacks just leave?" Well, like... for one... they're "free" but the penal system is forcing them into working the fields that their "former" masters now say they owe them rent on for living "for free" for a century+. And then that forced migration also reinforces poverty, it's hard to be an outsider in a new place, even if the new place is arguably more progressive than the old place, you're sitll an outsider starting with nothing, and even people who are sympathetic to your experience in the old place are cautious of what your arrival might mean for their place. This isn't ancient "black migration" history either, this same phenomenon plays out today with immigration or even domestic economic flight. Look at any thread here that explores people moving from California to anywhere else in the country, and there is a strong false stereotype that goes along with it, followed up by hostility that would sound as familiar in the Republican Rotary Club of Appling Georgia in their monthly meeting about securing the border.
That's not my problem. this thread was never intended to be looked at through the political sense (Notice I never mentioned politics or republicans in my OP). He was the one that veered it in that direction. All i'm arguing is that cultural it's a southern state. Full stop.
That's a little dishonest because you also said:
"Virginia just elected Youngkin. It's the south too."
WHich you're clearly saying there, "Virginia just elected [a Republican], it's the south too." Because, culturally, Youngkin is not a "Southern Good ol' boy ridin down to the sack o suds," or like (the myth of) "the southern gentleman." He's culturally more similar to someone like Larry Hogan (R), Steve Sisolak (D), or Charlie Baker (R), these sort of Chamber of Commerce, businessman types, he worked at a private equity fund for his whole career doing ... asset trading in Washington DC. Not exactly a cultural South'ner.
I agree that Virginia is a Southern state, though, of course it is. Culturally it's very different from Mississippi, Alabama, and the other states dominating voting here. I don't think that it
epitomizes Southern culture anymore, although 175 years ago it arguably did, the quintessential Southern state... the home of Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee. If Robert E. Lee was the quintessnetial "Southern Gentleman" (historical revisionism, of course), then Virginia was the quintessential Southern state. Today, though, 150 years after his death, Virginia is not really close. I agree with you that it's part of the South and deserves to be on the list, though of the 311 votes in this poll, I'm with the 99.7% of voters that it is *not* quintessentially Southern anymore.
