<p>Conyat: Sorry to hear.I bet recovery is going to take years.There are plenty of good people helping but goes far to show just how prepared the U.S.A. is for a major disaster. I wonder how long it took for San Fran to recover from it’s major earthquake in the beginning of the 20th century? And back then the industrial revolution was at it’s peak. I bet there will be areas where you are that never recover.It must be so difficult to have to deal with all this. How much do you think is the responsiblity of local or state officials incompetence and how much U.S. government? I know the feds are eexpecting private individuals to shoulder the burden but poor people, old people, they were just getting by before the disaster. The hurricane broke them.</p>
<p>backhandgrip: I wondered the same thing about the San Francisco earthquake, and it took a long time. </p>
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<p>Short answer is No, but that’s because some northerners dismiss southerners outright. Some northerners (by no means all) think the south is populated with nothing but uneducated hicks. I am New England born, although my family only came to the United States in 1964 (my dad emigrated from Ireland, like everyone else in his generation). </p>
<p>I used to travel to Georgia, both to Atlanta for work and to Hazelhurst to vist family. There are a lot of things I love about the south - and if I believed southerners were generally ignorant, I was quickly disabused of that notion -but my New England raised self prefers the cold and the way people up here mind their own business. Plus, I hate being called ma’am.</p>
<p>I completely agree with PackMom. Recently, a northerner who had moved here (to NC) actually corrected my pronunciation of the southern town where I grew up. I’ve also had non-southerners correct my pronunciation of my own name, which I just find bizarre.</p>
<p>I do think one of the running subtexts in this particular thread (and threads like it), is that southerners are less traveled, less well-heeled, definitely less educated, and do not understand nor trust “cultural differences.” That way of thinking gets really old after a while.</p>
<p>Do Southerners mistrust the North?</p>
<p>Yeah, we’re worried that all the Yankees will figure how much nicer it is down here, and relocate en masse - that’ll ruin everything, just like it ruined Florida ;).</p>
<p>Jack, it may just be that Southerners have better manners! :)</p>
<p>cangel: Agreed.</p>
<p>sjmom2329: Yes, well, that goes without saying. ;)</p>
<p>Well played, cangel. Well played. </p>
<p>Jack and PackMom, I guess I’m “up north” now, but my heart is still in the South. And while I lived there, if ONE MORE person had told me how nobody “down here” knows how to drive in the snow I would have committed a felony. :)</p>
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Packmom, it’s equally insulting for southern merchants and retail workers to make fun of the speech of northern customers. That’s happened to me.</p>
<p>I don’t like “ma’am” either, but when in Rome…just smile because it’s meant as a polite greeting. Bias against regions exists on both sides. D experienced it at a lax camp this summer, with an Atlanta girl constantly sterotyping NJ girls as rude & wishing southern manners were the norm all over the country. D is never rude, and the NJ polite response when thanking someone who offers you, say, a stick of gum, is “Yes, thank you.” This greatly offended the Atlanta girl, who would consider it rude not to profusely thank the gum-giver with a sentence or two, praising her generosity. Regional differences in speech, manner, and personal space can be misinterpreted, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>While continuing my education in Virginia in the late 1980s, I had ample political/culutral conversations and friendly disagreements with two native southern classmates. One never failed to refer to the U.S. as “the sovereign states” (vis-a-vis the federal guv’mint). The other, who was “compelled” to accept an undergraduate scholarship from a fine upstate New York college, but was miserable there, always refered to “northern people” in derogatory fashion. Incidentally, this fellow held the Stars and Bars in quite high regard. both guys were quite intellectual.</p>
<p>Also, when in Atlanta my favorite car bumper stickers that I’ve seen on the road are:</p>
<ol>
<li> “We don’t care how you did it up North!”</li>
<li> “If you love NY then take I-85 North.”</li>
</ol>
<p>Up here in PA, people use confederate battle flag license plates for the front plate, since the state doesn’t require front plates. Some of these people just think it means “rebel”. Others are obviously bigots.</p>
<p>My Southern family does not mistrust Northerners but definitely sees them as “odd”.
Why don’t Northerners serve sweet tea? Diner food in the South beats the North hands down!</p>
<p>One of my favorite pizza places serves sweet tea just like you’d get down south. It also serves awesome pizza, which I’ve found hard to find outside of the northeast (although I’ve never been to Chicago, so I can’t express an opinion on Chicago style deep-dish.)</p>
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<p>Well, the white people’s aspirations. But I digress.</p>
<p>Yes, they were/are treated WAY better in Chicago.</p>
<p>Excuse me? I was correcting what I saw as an overbroad statement about “Southerners’” goals in the mid-nineteenth century. If you believe that the statement was not overbroad, go ahead and tell us why that’s true.</p>
<p>I am just pointing out the hyopcrisy of much of the North.</p>
<p>I guess I don’t see where that’s germane to the point I was making. Maybe you weren’t responding to me. That being said, if I were among the “they” you refer to, and I were choosing a home in the U.S. in 1859, I’d choose Illinois over Mississippi, and I bet you would too (if Dred Scott is any guide). Illinois doesn’t have to be anything close to a racial utopia for that to be true, and informed people don’t claim that it was.</p>
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LOL! Yeah, I can see why we come across that way.
Can’t agree with that one. And what’s with boiled peanuts? Yuck!</p>
<p>Hahahahaha! I guess boiled peanuts are an acquired taste.</p>
<p>North South conflicts</p>
<p><a href=“http://ngeorgia.com/history/why.html[/url]”>http://ngeorgia.com/history/why.html</a></p>
<p>If there is not more than one side to things, there may at least be more than one way to look at it.</p>
<p>I have to weigh in here as a transplanted New Yorker in northern Fla. Northern Fla. may not be Mississippi or Alabama, but its known here by all as southern Georgia. I do notice many differences, but the one that I see the most raising kids is the emphasis that is put on the way women look. I see it with adults and children as well. How a woman looks is very very important. The whole femininity factor is accentuated. I wear LL Bean duckboots when it rains, and pinstripe oxford shirts with jeans. (NOT tight ones, either) I stick out like a sore thumb and am looked at curiously as the Northerner who dresses like a boy! Having gone to college in the Boston area where unisex was kind of the norm, I guess I got my style from that and it hasn’t changed. I also have a direct style from years on Wall street which the women here find…curious. I say what I think unless its hurtful or insulting…plain speaking I guess. I’m raising my daughter to value IQ over bra size, I guess. Implants are not on my Christmas wish list! No flames as I’m not saying ALL southern women are like this, of course, but where we are, this is the pervading outlook. I am hoping that my daughter will go to the midwest or northeast for college. THe womens’ movement didn’t make an impression here.</p>