North vs. South - is there still a "conflict" there?

[dansamy]

It really depends on where you relocate. If you relocate to a small, rural town, then yes. I'd expect some hazing. The degree of its severity being inversely proportional to the size of the small town. I've seen some small towns that were absolutely vicious towards outsiders. In a town where everyone knows everyone and they have all been intermingling for generations, forget it. You will never break into their ranks. In a larger, more urbanized area, then you have a chance of making yourself a new home.

 

[hentob]

I wasn't talking about Catholic vs. Protestant. There was not a single Protestant church in our area. And the closest Catholic church was over an hour away. No, I was talking Southern Baptist. A whole different "animal" altogether.

Baptists ARE Protestant

Your poor son

 

[Crankyshank]

I just wanted to interject that we have Chik fil-A here in the North. I have to drive 45min for it, but it can be found

 

[inspector63]

Are you people for real??? Hope that is not the thoughts of normal Northern Americans..

 

[Planogirl]

This is a very odd thread... I have never heard of this before.

 

[jjarman]

The bolded part is the only thing I disagree with. I never learned to liked boiled peanuts, and never will!

One more, it's not a car accident, it's a car wreck. Oh, and high school football is the sport to follow.

Car wreck. Didn't think about that. I thought that was what everyone called it.

 

[mvazul]

Baptists ARE Protestant

Your poor son

Sorry. I didn't know. Protestant was never mentioned where we lived. It was all about being Southern Baptist (which I was told is MUCH different than being a Baptist from the North) and Christianity. And Catholics are NOT considered Christian - even though almost all branches of religion stem from Catholocism.

My son was very happy to leave.

 

[clarabelle]

I don't think you understand the meaning of the word protestant.

definition: an adherent of any of those Christian bodies that separated from the Church of Rome during the Reformation, or of any group descended from them.

So -Baptists,Presbyterians, Methodists etc... would all be considered protestant.

Not all Southern Baptists are the same either. As with any religion lots of differences within the denomination

 

[minkydog]

I still can't figure this one out. I've had several people annoyed that I called them ma'am. Usually they take it as being called "old"

I don't say it all the time, but I'll say "Excuse me, ma'am" or something if I don't know the person's name. I think it's more rude for them to yell at me for calling them "ma'am" than it was rude for me to call them "ma'am" to begin with. What's the prefered address? "Hey you"? I also get annoyed when people tell you off for calling them Mr./Ms./Mrs. I always thought that's the polite way to address some one you're not well acquainted with.

You know, I don't get it either. I was raised to say "ma'm" and "sir" to people in authority and those older than me. Heck, i'm 53 and i still say it! Those words are marks of respect here in the south. OP, if you really want the matrons to love your kids, teach them to say "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am".

and then the next thing you want to practice is your "bless his heart." It's not what you think. "Bless his heart" can be many things--a term of compassion--"Bless his heart!"( can you believe his mother dressed him in that Auburn sweatshirt?) or "Bless his little heart!" (but that's an ugly baby!) A remark meant to extend sympathy--"Bless your heart!" (Your poor mother died and I don't know what to say and I feel very badly for you, often said with a big hug.)

Oooooorrrrrr....it can mean something entirely different when someone does something stupid--"Bless his heart!" (what an idiot!)

 

[hentob]

My son was very happy to leave.

That makes me sad.

We are relocating our family from PA to The Triad in June. I really liked Clemmons and North West Greensboro.

 

[hentob]

You know, I don't get it either. I was raised to say "ma'm" and "sir" to people in authority and those older than me. Heck, i'm 53 and i still say it! Those words are marks of respect here in the south. OP, if you really want the matrons to love your kids, teach them to say "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am".

and then the next thing you want to practice is your "bless his heart." It's not what you think. "Bless his heart" can be many things--a term of compassion--"Bless his heart!"( can you believe his mother dressed him in that Auburn sweatshirt?) or "Bless his little heart!" (but that's an ugly baby!) A remark meant to extend sympathy--"Bless your heart!" (Your poor mother died and I don't know what to say and I feel very badly for you, often said with a big hug.)

Oooooorrrrrr....it can mean something entirely different when someone does something stupid--"Bless his heart!" (what an idiot!)

See, I don't get that The South prides itself on manners and being polite and that whole "Bless his heart" thing is so rude. I don't think it is cute. Wow. You can sweetly call somebody an idiot...how nice and polite

Call the folks from NYC rude all you want, at least you know what you are getting


All tongue in cheek, people

 

[Goofycampers]

It really depends on where you relocate. If you relocate to a small, rural town, then yes. I'd expect some hazing. The degree of its severity being inversely proportional to the size of the small town. I've seen some small towns that were absolutely vicious towards outsiders. In a town where everyone knows everyone and they have all been intermingling for generations, forget it. You will never break into their ranks. In a larger, more urbanized area, then you have a chance of making yourself a new home.

I think that's a small town issue, not a southern one. When my DH and I were newly married we lived in a small northern town for a little less than a year and the people considered us outsiders and weren't exactly friendly to us. I never thought about it as that we were from the south so much as we just weren't from that town.

 

[Silent1CB]

Our school band did an exchange with a school band from a southern town. When our buses arrived, we were welcomed with signs saying "go home Yankees".

I can assure you nothing like that happened when their band came to our school.

I was very shocked this type of thing still happens. I've heard it from others who have moved to the south also.

 

[MrsPete]

Is it true that if our family, from northern MN, were to move to the south (could be anywhere from Arizona to North Carolina, or anywhere in between), we would be hated? Would my son have a hard time fitting in with your kids in school? Would we always just be “those Yankees”?

Yankees are flooding to the South these days. The climate, the better economic opportunities, and the lower taxes and cost of living are attracting both individuals and businesses. You wouldn't be alone.

No, people are not treated badly here because they're from the North; however, people who don't "quite fit in" THINK that they're treated differently because they're transplants. That's not true. It's because they don't fit in! It was probably true for those same people up North too!

Here's a fitting-in hint: One thing that Southerners HATE is Yankees who move down here and criticize everything. One example: Some people come down here and criticize loudly that we stop the whole world every time it snows. Yeah, well, here it snows 2 days every other year. Our townships don't buy snowplows, employ drivers, and stock up on salt. It makes more sense just to shut down the world. Not preparing for snow is one way we keep taxes low here. There was a tee-shirt that was popular a couple years ago that read "We don't care how you did it up North". The point is, just don't come in set to tell us how ignorant we are; that's the stereotype of a Yankee transplant.

As far as having windows smashed if you have a Northern team sticker on your car- um well, I wouldn't want to live in a place like that and I am a true GRITS - Girl Raised In The South.

I've lived in the South for more than four decades, and I have NEVER heard of violence directed towards anyone from the North. However, it is true that you'll not find many people who'll share your interest in Northern sports like hockey -- we have some teams here, but the sport isn't popular with the majority. Football rules.

Also people from the North tend to be more direct...so I used to piss people off on a regular basis

People are much more polite -- at least to your face -- in the South.

He also says that he always gets the feeling that people are making judgements about his intellect because of his speach patterns.

Yep, that's true. People get the idea that because we speak slowly down here, we also think slowly. That's not true.

The only time we ever feel judged at all is in religion. We are Catholic and many here don't realize that we are Christian.

You must be hanging around with some ignorant people; I don't know anyone who isn't aware that Catholics worship Christ. Yes, the South is predominantly Protestant, but I'd estimate that 20% of the folks around here are Catholics who attend church regularly and quite a few more claim to be Catholic because they were baptised Catholic but aren't really associated with any one particular church. Some Baptists and Methodists have a hard time with the concept of praying to Mary and the saints, but I don't know any who are unaware that Christ is the center of the Catholic church.

The real religious minority here in the South are Jews. I don't think there's any animosity towards them, but there just aren't many. I'm really only friends with one Jewish family, and I feel badly for them that they have to drive their children waaaaay over to the other side of a big city to take their kids to Hebrew school. I honestly don't know why -- since temple is very important to them -- they didn't choose to live closer to their temple. It seems very inconvenient. And I literally don't know a single Muslim.

 

[asta]

If I'm being totally honest, I think that some folks (not most, but a handful) move to the South and are very bitter at having left the North. Those folks sometimes say stuff that is very insulting--constantly complaining about how different everything is down here. To me that's just bad manners, just as it would be for me to talk poorly about where they live.

I think that this poster has made an excellent point. This is really about some people having extremely bad manners. I have lived in both a small southern town and in a large city and have never seen anyone treated rudely just because they are from the north. I wouldn't say that people are treated rudely but we definitely get tired of people who move here and want to constantly complain that things are not like they are where they came from. This is just rude whether you are from the north or from another planet. These people have chosen to move into our area and yet want to complain that food, church, schools, etc are not the same as where they came from. Think about it - I hope you wouldn't walk into someones home and be critical of their house. If you do this I think that you should expect to not be treated warmly.

 

[minkydog]

See, I don't get that The South prides itself on manners and being polite and that whole "Bless his heart" thing is so rude. I don't think it is cute. Wow. You can sweetly call somebody an idiot...how nice and polite

Call the folks from NYC rude all you want, at least you know what you are getting


All tongue in cheek, people

But see, that's kinda the point. Where I was raised, in rural south Alabama, you would never say something unkind right to someone's face, no matter how nasty, aggressive or bombastic they are. We just get more and more polite. More formal. It's just how it is. I never saw two adults have a public disagreement until I moved to NYCs "extra borough" (miami.) There were to elderly ladies and an elderly man having at it in full voice right out there in the Walmart parking lot. I could gather from their accents that they were definitly not from the south! But it was the cursing and screaming that really floored me. I was 35yr old and I had NEVER witnessed such a thing. All I could say was "Bless their hearts!"

 

[Goofycampers]

To the OP, I have lived in many places over the years . A couple of northern towns and many southerns ones. I have NEVER seen people singled out and mistreated as has been suggested here simply because they were from the north. If you are polite and treat people with respect they will usually return in kind. But when you move into a new community and have the attitude that you're from the north and we northerns are blunt so deal with it , well then you may be treated icily. That's just human nature. If you come into the area and try to assimilate you'll have a much easier time.

 

[bumbershoot]

Reading it all, it's so interesting to hear everyone's experiences. Some people experienced nothing negative, others have. Some would never be rude, others would. Etc Etc.

The one that that always stood out for me while living there, and it's evident in this thread, is that Atlanta is entirely it's OWN place. Those in Atlanta can't extrapolate that how it is there (and it's a huge huge place) is how it is in the rest of the South.

I lived in SC, Spartanburg to be exact, for 4 years in total. One summer, then from '92 to the end of '95. I actually quite loved it! Beautiful, for the most part. One of my fave things to do, before the team moved to Kannapolis, was to go to the AAA baseball games and eat a pretzel, sitting in the Family section, which was the only place to sit if you wanted to be away from the cigarette smoke.

My brother went to Duke and experienced a whole different kind of the South. The one funny experience he had was when he borrowed a friend's car one evening, and got lost getting back to campus. He finally opened his window and smelled his way back, as the tobacco factories were quite close to campus, and it led him home. (the guy can smell an orange being peeled from upstairs in a closed room, his nose is THAT sensitive...as a child my mom delighted in his ability to differentiate wines by smell, LOL)

My mom and stepdad also lived in Burke, VA, which is officially the South but very very different. And I spent time in WV, which I also loved, but at times felt even further South than Spartanburg did!

While in SC, I was also surrounded by Easterners. I myself am from the West, which isn't actually Yankee (and my family tree includes New Yorkers as well as former land owners in Texas from the Civil War era) but is a whole "nother" ball of wax when telling people from Spartanburg where you grew up. I didn't help matters by being in my Birkenstock phase, LOL.

But I had a job at Fresh Market (and looked way too much like Susan Smith...she was the reason I cut my hair and got contacts, actually, b/c I looked WAY too much like her) and I worked in the chiro school's clinic with an OLD school Southern woman...she taught me a lot!

Anyway, my point is, I tried to fit in...I even went to a huge Southern Baptist church for awhile!...and had a nice time, while watching my NJ and NY and PA friends struggle b/c they did NOT try to fit in.

Then when I was 11 we moved to Pascagoula, MS, where we learned that the War of Northern Aggression was still being fought in the streets. I had never heard teh N-word until I moved to Mississippi (and I didn't pick it up, either!) Because I had that lovely Tidewater/eastern VA accent, people called me a "d--- Yankee!" WHAT?? Last time I checked, Virginia was below the Mason-Dixon line! I can't tell you how many times people would tell me "Say something! We want to hear your weird accent." Bunch of marroons...

I went to Sherman College, a chiropractic school. It was named for the chiro that the founder of the school revered. There were still people, in the mid-90s, who would NOT visit that school's clinic, they wanted chiro but wouldn't go there, SOLELY because of the NAME of the clinic. That's how entrenched some of the citizens still were in the war. And they'd had countless people explain why it was named Sherman, but they still woudln't go.

And it just displays how ignorant the founders were, to name it that, smack dab in SC. Stupid of them. (from PA)

First time I really heard that word was from the charming Southern woman I worked with in the clinic. She had the most refined accent. She taught me so much. Including...the fact that eeny meeny miny mo was NOT about a "tiger" at all. Whole different word there. She nearly fell off her chair when I started to do the "tiger by the toe" rhyme to choose which clinician I was going to call down for a walk-in patient...she'd never even heard it with "tiger".

And try to tell the people where I'm from that it's not "the south." LOL. Stupidest thing I've ever heard. I'm from boggy bayou, where trucks, rednecks, and camo run rampant. Some of us even have a cute little southern accent.

My aunt and cousins have lived in the Port Orange area for most of the cousin's life...one of them was born there...lives in Orlando now...they are the FIRST to say that FL is NOT the South.

I haven't read all of the replies but this is my take on the situation. As long as you dont come to the South and tell everyone how much better everything is in the North, you should be fine. The only "Yankees" we don't welcome are the ones who move here and tell us how back-woods we are, etc. I mean seriously, if I moved to Minnesota and told y'all how much greater it was to live in NC, wouldn't you be offended?

This is true, and it's true for every place! But it's also natural for people to be flummoxed when they first move to a place, and to comment on the differences.

For instance, I never got used to the ability of a short-term boyfriend to walk into the local Piggly Wiggly without shirt or shoes, smoking a cigarette. Also never got used to fat back in plastic just sitting there on a table. Of course I knew it was preserved in salt and didn't need refrigeration, but elsewhere it would have been in a cooler no matter what.

But I don't think that my NE friends needed to STILL harp on how hard it was to understand people, 3 years after living there, when I sometimes had a hard time understanding them, LOL. But then, people never want to admit that THEY have the accent, LOL.

If, on the other hand, you open up and embrace southern ideals, i.e. pickup trucks, fishing, hunting, individual rights, religion, etc. or at least don't start bashing those ideals, you will find southerners to be very open, accepting and friendly.

I agree. And I think that's a big reason I got along while my friends had a harder time.

oh, and, the brash east coast stuff, doesn't work down here.

I agree. I would go to the store with friends, with different transactions. I would soften my voice, perhaps a "y'all" would come out because I'm a natural mimic who falls into the speech patterns I'm hearing, and I would get really lovely service. Then my friend from NJ would be next, and the same cashier would be really cold to her.

Best thing I did for myself while in SC was to just Slow Down. Slow the walking (I was drenched in sweat before I stopped rushing everywhere!), slow the talking, slow it alllll down. Ahhh, much better.

Have your son start eating grits and fried okra now. Also all soft drinks are called 'Coke' not pop or soda.

Gotta tell ya...from my experience, that's an Atlanta thing.

Everyone in SC that I talked to, who was from there, called it sodapop. (WV and VA too) I would have noticed if they called it Coke, because that's also a California thing, something I worked to get rid of my first year in WA!

I will say that the pp who said the brashness doesnt fly was completely true though. I constantly feel like I am walking on eggshells (with my southern co workers in particular). It's kind of annoying. Most of the southerners i seem to interact with dont know how to take sarcasm, or people who are quite direct and tell it like it is. They need to use phrases like "bless her heart" to soften the blow of anything and get offended if you're not painfully polite.
But again, that could just be the NYer in me coming out

Glad others address "bless your heart" later, b/c I hated to be the one to break it to you...

Hold the fort ya'll! we gotta stop this use of the word Redneck in a negative connotation.

I think that probably if you are a redneck, you're allowed to use it. If you're not, it's best to stay away from using that word lest it come out wrong.

Baptists ARE Protestant

I dare you to go to the huge Southern Baptist church in SC and say that....though maybe it's changed in the time I've been gone. Then again, DH was Southern Baptist b/c of his time as a kid in Taiwan at a missionary school, and he would have laid into you about that, too, before he went back to Korean Buddhism.

and then the next thing you want to practice is your "bless his heart." It's not what you think. "Bless his heart" can be many things--a term of compassion--"Bless his heart!"( can you believe his mother dressed him in that Auburn sweatshirt?) or "Bless his little heart!" (but that's an ugly baby!) A remark meant to extend sympathy--"Bless your heart!" (Your poor mother died and I don't know what to say and I feel very badly for you, often said with a big hug.)

Oooooorrrrrr....it can mean something entirely different when someone does something stupid--"Bless his heart!" (what an idiot!)

Yep! That phrase is a very very interesting one...definitely not as polite as many think it is!

One example: Some people come down here and criticize loudly that we stop the whole world every time it snows. Yeah, well, here it snows 2 days every other year. Our townships don't buy snowplows, employ drivers, and stock up on salt. It makes more sense just to shut down the world. Not preparing for snow is one way we keep taxes low here.

...I don't know anyone who isn't aware that Catholics worship Christ. Yes, the South is predominantly Protestant, but I'd estimate that 20% of the folks around here are Catholics who attend church regularly and quite a few more claim to be Catholic because they were baptised Catholic but aren't really associated with any one particular church. Some Baptists and Methodists have a hard time with the concept of praying to Mary and the saints, but I don't know any who are unaware that Christ is the center of the Catholic church.

FYI, it gets old to hear that up here in western WA, too. People from elsewhere (and I used to be from CA, which has negative connotations here) like to complain about how it all stops in the snow. Well, what do they expect? It's HILLY around here! And people don't grow up driving in the snow, so do you WANT people driving when they don't know how to? Just enjoy the downtime, or commute like DH did last year when it snowed. Took the lightrail and the train, did just fine, made it into work every day but one, when the ice made him fall and he went back home.

Speaking of that, I remember people going ON about how schools were closed and it wasn't snowing anymore in SC. But so many of the kids lived rurally, with big tree cover, and the roads were not passable b/c they were icy all day until well into the afternoon. Then they'd ice back up as soon as the sun set. The kids couldn't get into school, so school was closed. Even though the main roads were clear. Not sure why my friends and colleagues couldln't hear that!

My main point is...people talk about the differences no matter where they go. It's not a north vs south thing...it's just a "wow this is so different" thing.

At the time I was in Spartanburg, there were no Southern Baptists I knew who understood Catholicism. And remember, I went to a church for awhile and heard them talk! They all, to a one, believed firmly that Catholics worship saints, and that was their problem with it.

But maybe they've learned differently in the years since I left. Maybe.




OP, who knows what will happen if you guys move? Will depend on where you go, how you act, who the people are around you specifically. Have fun deciding!

 

[hentob]

I dare you to go to the huge Southern Baptist church in SC and say that....though maybe it's changed in the time I've been gone. Then again, DH was Southern Baptist b/c of his time as a kid in Taiwan at a missionary school, and he would have laid into you about that, too, before he went back to Korean Buddhism.

Huh? A Baptist is a Protestant no matter how you slice it. It is a fact that you can't dispute.

 

[C.Ann]

It would make me very sad to think that this would be true..

I'm from NY and I've never lived in the south, but I can tell you that all of the southerners I have ever had contact with were very polite, friendly, and helpful to the point where they were practically tripping over themselves..

Does that really change - if a person moves south - as opposed to just visiting there?