How did they form? What are their specific traits? Stereotypes (even untrue, if marked as such)?
If cultural differences coincide with geography, please mention in, too.
In the questions about weird things people from different continents do somebody pointed out, that Europeans have little knowledge of this, so please fix my ignorance.
- East coast: old money, lots of drinking, cold weather, violence, power, liberalism, deciduous forests
- Southeast: southern hospitality, shithole school systems, conservativism, sweet tea, food influenced by french cuisine, nascar, lush vegetation
- Southwest: cowboys, ranch homes, cultural mixing with Mexico, drugs, art, desert and mountains
- West coast (basically california): hollywood, progressivism, new money, asian-pacific food influences, hippies, poop, surfing
- Northwest: best weed, created grunge genre, rainy, dismal, chill, northern european food influences, rainforests
- North-middle: liminal space, copy-pasted terrain, independent/libertarian, wheat, sparsely populated
- Midest: mix of conservative and liberal, plains farmland, cozy houses, desperate to define itself culturally (see Chicago architectural publications), corn, soybeans, and pigs, neutral accent, german and polish food influence
source: memory
Southeast: southern hospitality
Should be “southern hospitality” in quotation marks. Rudest bunch you’ll ever meet unless you are exactly like them.
Nah we’re never rude, they’re all compliments.
Well bless your heart, I would never have the courage to wear something like that in public like you do.
I’ve found DC to be the rudest bunch of people I’ve ever met. Everywhere I’ve gone in DC the people are just totally rude assholes. Everywhere I’ve been in the south has just been nice, polite, helpful people.
I found it too be exactly the opposite. Everyone in DC is doing interesting things. There is a lot of passion and hard work as well. They mostly shy away from direct politics in a town that is incredibly political by its very nature. I’ve been helped on the street more by average people than I ever was around Atlanta, New Orleans, or the spaces between.
The South(east) as a whole should not be lumped in with the Cajuns.
I was thinking specifically of an apple cobbler recipe I once did that had me dotting the whole pan with butter after the end, which I thought was a French technique. Turns out cobbler’s got English origins not French.
Ah, okay. Yeah, IIRC Scotland also contributed a lot of the really grease-heavy dishes to the no-spice parts of the South.
West coast (basically california): hollywood, progressivism, new money, asian-pacific food influences, hippies, poop, surfing
One of these is not like the others.
This is pretty accurate.
As an American I pretty much agree this is decently accurate
I couldn’t resist… But Wikipedia should have tons of info on exactly this.
You know, you’re never going to change that map if you tell everyone living in one of those red states that their home is part of “dumbfuckistan.”
I currently live here. I’m losing hope.
If they stop making dumb fuck choices, they can rejoin the rest of the USA. See Georgia
I used to live in Dumbfuckistan and I can’t really find fault with this.
Sorry
I agree to an extent, but also as an Oklahoman it’s getting harder and harder to argue with this label :/
About 40% of Wisconsin is trying its damnedest to join Dumbfuckistan. Glad we have that blanket of reason surrounding us and giving us hope.
About 40% of all of those blue states are doing the same. It’s only more evident in Wisconsin because of our gerrymandering and re-electing Russian Ron.
I thought it was just a giant retirement home for old white people
edit: nvm thinking of Iowa lol
The cultural regions are New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, the Midwest, the Mountain West and the Pacific.
Politically the South and Midwest are conservative. New England, Pacific, and Mountain regions are liberal. The Mid-Atlantic is a mix.
Cultural differences are largely based on popular religions or lack of religion.
That’s about it, Americans are pretty much all the same no matter what state or region you are from.
I recommend https://colinwoodard.com/books/american-nations/ It’s a well written source on this subject. Woodard details eleven groups each with a shared cultural background, with names like New Netherland, Tidewater, El Norte, and the Left Coast. The Wikipedia page for the book has a broad outline of the ideas if you want an overview; but, the book is well worth a read if this is an area of interest for you.
I will check that.
I’m going to check this out, thanks for the recommendation
His video on it should be required viewing for everyone. https://youtu.be/N9XMTdRwWVg?si=pBP3D3lAgUmeN1ln
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://youtu.be/N9XMTdRwWVg?si=pBP3D3lAgUmeN1ln
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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I’m not from USA so I won’t answer your question directly (other posters are better for that). Instead I’ll point out a few things, based on knowledge of Linguistics plus other stuff:
- Cultural differences are somewhat objective, but how you split the cultures is subjective. As such don’t be surprised if different maps show different divisions.
- Language usually play a huge role, and isoglosses are often used to demarcate cultures. However, people shouldn’t confuse dialect+language with culture, as it’s perfectly possible to lump together two populations of different dialects as the same culture, or to split a single dialect into multiple cultures. Also, dialects themselves tend to be subjective, like the above.
- Geography does play a role too, but it boils down to interaction between settlements and identity. For example you’re more likely to contact the guy in the other city (thus share the same culture) if there’s just plains between your cities, instead of a big fucking mountain.
- A good place to look at the cultural divisions is the original settlements. Based on that I think that it’ll be easier to demarcate cultures in Eastern USA than in the West.
- More often than not cultures don’t give a fuck about government borders. So don’t be surprised if some cultures grab “chunks” of USA plus either Mexico or Canada.
Recent political shifts have substantially pitted “heartland” (Central states) against “coastal elites”; “heartland” is depicted as rural/traditionalist/uneducated whereas the coasts are rich and intellectual (with negative connotations for both)
There is a good general summary here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/
