Is South Florida part of the Caribbean and/or Latin America?

[McBane]

Originally Posted by JManc

It's still the South but all carpetbagged to hell by all them damn Yankees and foreigners.

But it's essentially been that way since Henry Flagler. South FL never attracted colonists from England or a massive settler movement on the scale of Kentucky or Tennessee. The economy was never dependent on slavery and therefore, it lacks a historical African-American population.

No one here is saying that the South is just a bunch of trailer park rednecks who revere the Confederacy, go to Church every Sunday, and vote Republican. Anyone who believes that is completely ignorant. But there are historical, religious, ethnic, and cultural ties that make up the unique culture of South. It's just that those ties don't extend to South FL.

And yea, there are certainly other, smaller outliers like Asheville but in no way does that compare to a place as large as South FL, which has a metro population of almost 7 million people.

[cannedairspray]

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc

But as I keep pointing out, the "cultural" South encompasses more than just fat white Baptists who burn rubber out of the church parking lot on Sunday so they can beat the Methodists to the steakhouse. I assure you that the Gullah culture of the Low Country in South Carolina has next to nothing in common with Charlotte or Atlanta, but nobody's trying to excommunicate it. There are islands off the coast of Virginia so isolated that the residents still speak a form of Elizabethan English, and have nothing in common with any American culture anywhere, but they're still Southern.

The South is a big tent, but it's also a tent upon which a great many people have spent a great many years pissing. Therefore, there is a certain stigma to being in said tent, which is why so many people will mentally contort themselves to avoid having to admit that like it or not, geographically -- and therefore in every other way -- they are Southerners. They may be new Southerners, yes, but Southerners they are. I mean, those same New Yorkers, Michigander, Ohioans, New Jerseyans, Pennsylvanians and others who settle in Florida before moving to someplace with seasons are increasingly skipping Florida altogether and just moving straight to Western North Carolina. There are certain golf courses, nursing homes, and gated communities here where, when the residents get to talking, their nasal Northeaster accents make it sound like a flock of honking geese, same it would if they'd stayed put in Massachusetts, and where half the houses are inhabited by good Northern Catholics with their concrete virgins in the yard. Nobody's trying to say those enclaves aren't Southern.

Is Southern not cultural and just geographical? If it is cultural, I don't see many similarities to it with South Florida.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Where in Miami does it feel remotely like, say, Jackson, MS?

I think even NYC would have more southern cred at this point. While NYC's black community skews Carribean, there are still a ton of black folks with roots in the Carolinas and Georgia, especially.

Does Miami even have non-immigrant black neighborhoods?

Liberty City? Rick Ross and Trick Daddy seem pretty damn southern to me.

I agree that Miami is more culturally diverse than other southern cities (and most northern cities), but there is definitely a distinct southern identity in that diversity, so I will disagree with saying Miami isn't southern. It is way more southern than any northern city that comes to mind.

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by McBane

But it's essentially been that way since Henry Flagler. South FL never attracted colonists from England or a massive settler movement on the scale of Kentucky or Tennessee. The economy was never dependent on slavery and therefore, it lacks a historical African-American population.

Not saying that South Florida was ever dependent on slaves the way someplace like Charleston was, but I still found this interesting. Here's an excerpt:

THE PLANTATION ECONOMY IN MIAMI

Spain sold Florida to the US in 1821. Within four years, a grant of title to the north bank of the Miami River mouth was awarded to a James Egan, who had been a surveyor to the Spanish. When the land was sold in 1830, plantation slaves were introduced to Miami.

Richard Fitzpatrick, a South Carolinian, bought Egan's land and quickly established a plantation. A visitor to the region reported that Fitzpatrick's enterprise included 50 to 60 slaves who lived in primitive wooden huts.

It was an uncertain time, in which the settlers were at war against the Seminole Indians. In 1835 Fitzpatrick became a Colonel and went to Cuba for bloodhounds, to be used to hunt down the Seminole Indians who were now compressed into the Everglades. The following year Fitzpatrick was elected to the state legislature and helped to create Dade County.

The plantation was left under the control of his overseer, James Wright. When Seminoles killed a family of settlers near what is now Ft. Lauderdale, Wright got news of the attack in time to evacuate himself and the slaves. The removal of so many slaves was seen as a remarkable achievement, for the Seminoles would likely have taken them in. A search party sent to the river reported that Fitzpatrick's settlement had been completely destroyed.

While I find the idea silly of saying that a place cannot possibly be of its region because it does not fit with preconceived notions or was founded relatively recently -- because that would allow us to say that Phoenix, AZ is a Southern city, as it was established by a Confederate veteran and morphine addict in 1867 -- I do enjoy the conversations this opens up. I also enjoy the little tidbits of little known history that you can dig up when you start to try to really learn about a place.

[destroycreate]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Liberty City? Rick Ross and Trick Daddy seem pretty damn southern to me.

I agree that Miami is more culturally diverse than other southern cities (and most northern cities), but there is definitely a distinct southern identity in that diversity, so I will disagree with saying Miami isn't southern. It is way more southern than any northern city that comes to mind.

Lol in that case Miami is also Yonkers by the sea.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Lol in that case Miami is also Yonkers by the sea.

I was thinking more the New Orleans of Latin America.

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by cannedairspray

Is Southern not cultural and just geographical? If it is cultural, I don't see many similarities to it with South Florida.

Geography determines where you are, so Miami is Southern. There is no such thing as a monolithic Southern culture. Southern culture as a whole just takes in too much and includes too much. Yes, we have fat white Baptists. Yes we have soulless Charlottean bankers. Yes we have voodoo thriving in Louisiana and coastal Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Yes, we have Santeria in Florida and Atlanta and God(s) knows where all else. Yes we have Catholics. We bury our dead six feet down and facing east so they'll get the best view of Judgment Day here in WNC, and yes we bury them in big stone boxes, sometimes stacked several high in Louisiana. We have majority black counties, and we have counties so white that people stop and stare if an actual minority happens to blunder their way in off the interstate looking for a gas station. We have Nashville cranking out country crap, and we have people like me who would rather chew tinfoil than listen to it. Black cotillions and church hats, and rusty crackers back in the hollers. Cherokee, Choctaw, Lumbee, Catawba, Melungeon, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese. Tiendas and taquerias and the quinceanera superstore next to the Goodwill and the Supermercado Azteca.

Why would anyone think that in the midst of all that so much more, there would not be room for Miami?

[Docere]

When you split a very large country with a lot of diversity into 4 "regions", you're obviously going to see a lot of variation within those regions.

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by Docere

When you split a very large country with a lot of diversity into 4 "regions", you're obviously going to see a lot of variation within those regions.

Yes, but for some reason you very rarely ever see people fighting to their last breath to not be lumped in with the Northeast, Midwest, Southwest, or Northwest. No one ever cringes in shame at the thought that Seattle might -- horrors! -- be located in the Northwest, or tries to claim it's actually Midwestern because the founding Denny Party of Seattle was from Illinois.

[goat314]

There are still a bunch of native South Floridians (black and white) that are as Southern as anyone from Mississippi. In fact, a good friend of mine is Nicaraguan born and raised in Dade as he would say. Spanish is his first language, but English dialect is undeniably Southern. Despite the large of transplants and immigrants, Florida is still Southern in the stereotypical and more nuanced way. Trailer parks, drawly accents, confederate flags, and wife-beater tanktops as everyday apparell are all still common sights in Florida even in South Florida. For those who said Miami does not have a Southern legacy, a quick google search could thoroughly dispell that myth.

[Obadno]

I don't even like to use the term Latin America

Northern Mexico, Central mexico, Southern mexico and the Yucatan are culturally different let alone comparable to places like Colombia or Chile.

Latin America could be broken into as many cultural divisions as North America, maybe more.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc

Yes, but for some reason you very rarely ever see people fighting to their last breath to not be lumped in with the Northeast, Midwest, Southwest, or Northwest. No one ever cringes in shame at the thought that Seattle might -- horrors! -- be located in the Northwest, or tries to claim it's actually Midwestern because the founding Denny Party of Seattle was from Illinois.

I think this is because of the 4 regions, the South is really the most a uniquely defined cultural region.

The thing is though...the New South of fast postwar growth, transplants etc. actually represents a large part of the South.

[dave8721]

Its not a Caribbean or latin american region not is it Southern. You will see some southerness especially in the western half of Palm Beach County but that is because South Florida borders the South so of course there will be some connections. Even the Southern types in places like Loxahatchee are themselves southern transplants from places like Georgia or North Florida. Everyone is a recent transplant from somewhere, some are transplants from the south, many more are from the north or Caribbean/Latin America. After the Seminole Wars, South Florida's population was essentially 0 by 1880 with the vast majority of the area hacked out of the swamps post 1910. There was no existing Southern culture that was overrun by northerners. The area was essentially created by northerners. The Southern transplants in South Florida don't make South Florida southern just like northern transplants (and many South Florida transplants) don't make North Carolina northern.

Is Texas "Southern" because it borders Louisiana and was once part of the Confederacy? No, Texas is its own thing. Is D.C. Southern because it once was? No.

The problem as stated earlier is that there are a lot more than 3 or 4 regions in the U.S.

If Puerto Rico became a US state tomorrow would it be in the South? Its not in the North so by default it must be in the South right?

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by dave8721

If Puerto Rico became a US state tomorrow would it be in the South? Its not in the North so by default it must be in the South right?

Yes, actually, unless you want to count it the way we count Hawaii and Alaska as their own separate regions and as we would likely count it if the Virgin Islands, Guam, Saipan, or the Marshall Islands were to be granted statehood.

Meanwhile, in doing a little research today I found it interesting that, as noted earlier in this discussion, the first plantation complete with slaves in the area that would become Miami was built in 1830 by Richard Fitzpatrick, a South Carolinian. That plantation was destroyed by 1838, but the establishment of Fort Dallas in that year led to diminished hostilities from the Seminoles. By 1842 the original Fitzpatrick plantation had been sold to William F. English, also a South Carolinian and nephew to Richard Fitzpatrick, who re-established the plantation with one hundred slaves. A slave quarters was built on the land to house them. The slave quarters was still standing in 1886 when it was used as the first Dade County Courthouse, and what I found to be especially interesting was that in 1889, Julia Tuttle, mother of Miami, purchased and settled into the English plantation.

So, long story short, a plantation and a slave quarters were the nexus of the city of Miami. The slave quarters is still standing, in Lummus Park near downtown Miami. It was moved there from its original location in 1925. Take a look at it here. That wooden house over to the right, by the way, is the Wagner House, Miami's oldest extant house, built in 1855.

[cannedairspray]

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc

Geography determines where you are, so Miami is Southern.

As the Puerto Rican example indicates, this is kinda silly. No one is wondering where Miami is on the map, we're wondering if it has more in common culturally with Atlanta and Birmingham and Savannah and Jackson than it does with New York and Philly and Cleveland.

There is no such thing as a monolithic Southern culture. Southern culture as a whole just takes in too much and includes too much. Yes, we have fat white Baptists. Yes we have soulless Charlottean bankers. Yes we have voodoo thriving in Louisiana and coastal Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Yes, we have Santeria in Florida and Atlanta and God(s) knows where all else. Yes we have Catholics. We bury our dead six feet down and facing east so they'll get the best view of Judgment Day here in WNC, and yes we bury them in big stone boxes, sometimes stacked several high in Louisiana. We have majority black counties, and we have counties so white that people stop and stare if an actual minority happens to blunder their way in off the interstate looking for a gas station. We have Nashville cranking out country crap, and we have people like me who would rather chew tinfoil than listen to it. Black cotillions and church hats, and rusty crackers back in the hollers. Cherokee, Choctaw, Lumbee, Catawba, Melungeon, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese. Tiendas and taquerias and the quinceanera superstore next to the Goodwill and the Supermercado Azteca.

Why would anyone think that in the midst of all that so much more, there would not be room for Miami?

If there's so much, why isn't there room for El Paso and Mexico City and Caracas in there?

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by cannedairspray

As the Puerto Rican example indicates, this is kinda silly. No one is wondering where Miami is on the map, we're wondering if it has more in common culturally with Atlanta and Birmingham and Savannah and Jackson than it does with New York and Philly and Cleveland.

I addressed the Puerto Rico example. As for South Florida, it doesn't really matter if Miami has more in common with Philadelphia because there is no single Southern culture. Atlanta has more in common with New York than Savannah does. The only reason this issue ever even comes up is because it gives some people a fierce case of the willies to think they might actually be one of those... Southerners... that people sometimes huddle together to discuss worriedly in hushed, whispered tones.

If there's so much, why isn't there room for El Paso and Mexico City and Caracas in there?

Because El Paso is Western and for the same reason that New England does not include Montreal and Halifax.

But hey... if that's how we're going to do it, with Miami divorced from the South because the modern city was founded at a late date by a Northerner, I'm sure the South would be happy to claim Phoenix, founded at a late date by a morphine-addicted Confederate veteran.

[cannedairspray]

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc

I addressed the Puerto Rico example.

I mean, you responded to it, yes. Did you "address it" in a way where people are "oh yeah, that's right"? I don't think so. Alaska and Hawaii are generally considered to be their own thing. I've lived in the Pacific Northwest, and I've lived in California, and I've lived in Hawaii. It's nothing like the first two.

As for South Florida, it doesn't really matter if Miami has more in common with Philadelphia because there is no single Southern culture.

That's kinda the thing: no one is saying there is a single Southern culture. There being more than a monolithic Southern culture and Miami not being Southern are two mutually exclusive things.

Atlanta has more in common with New York than Savannah does. The only reason this issue ever even comes up is because it gives some people a fierce case of the willies to think they might actually be one of those... Southerners... that people sometimes huddle together to discuss worriedly in hushed, whispered tones.

Now the question is if Atlanta has more in common with New York than it does Savannah. I have noting against Southerners, am not afraid of them, don't think they're stupid, or anything like that. But when I think of southern culture, no part of me thinks of Miami and it simply being south of the Mason Dixon line doesn't change that any more than it does for Havana.

Because El Paso is Western

Well, it's also southern if you look at the map, is it not?

and for the same reason that New England does not include Montreal and Halifax.

Why? Culture can't extend across political boundaries?

But hey... if that's how we're going to do it, with Miami divorced from the South because the modern city was founded at a late date by a Northerner, I'm sure the South would be happy to claim Phoenix, founded at a late date by a morphine-addicted Confederate veteran.

It's "because" it's not culturally southern, really. Nor is Phoenix. Nor is Brownsville, although it's just about as south as Miami, in a state that was part of the Confederacy.

[Docere]

And DC feels more like Atlanta than New York. But I guess if one sees the world through a "Manhattan and Georgetown" lens, NYC and DC seem vaguely similar since they're both filled with Ivy League-educated liberal establishment types.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

And DC feels more like Atlanta than New York. But I guess if one sees the world through a "Manhattan and Georgetown" lens, NYC and DC seem vaguely similar since they're both filled with Ivy League-educated liberal establishment types.

DC looks more like Atlanta, with the winding roads, green hills and new sprawl, but feels more like NYC, especially in the District itself and environs.

Montgomery County feels more or less like Westchester, Bergen or Fairfield Counties. NW DC feels like Riverdale.

[McBane]

But the South DOES have a distinct culture and it seems like Haunted has some sort of inferiority complex. As I've said before and others have acknowledged (but Haunted continues to ignore), within that culture, there is certainly room for differences - no one expects such a large region to be uniform. But there are too many similarities to ignore.

One such similarity: southern states have voted for conservative political parties as a bloc for pretty much our entire country's existence. Why do they all vote the same if there's not a unifying culture? What is it then?