I’ve lived in most of US cultural divisions and currently reside in the Deep South, as I have for 10 years.
Major differences:
Demographic: It skews mostly White, with Black and Hispanic. There isn’t a large Asian population here.
There is an honor/respect culture that was born originally out of farming and Christianity. This brings the southern hospitality and friendliness towards strangers.
But that same honor culture drives much of the hyper-masculinity, and willingness to fight at the sign of disrespect. After all, if you let another man to talk down to you, you risk losing the respect of your peers.
This masculinity is represented in the types of clothes men wear (looser clothes, jeans, less flashy attire) and the cars they drive (lifted pickup trucks, SUV’s).
Yes, it’s conservative. You’ll see lots of Trump bumper stickers. The week before the election, a man was towing a “Vote for Trump” banner behind his airplane.
The type of humor is more blunt and cutting (albeit hilarious).
Political correctness is seen as arsenic, poison, a suppression of speech. You need to have thick skin around here; roasting each other is a common form of discourse and bonding.
The outdoors is a big part of life. Many people hunt and fish. Again, this comes back to the southern roots in farming and living off of the land.
Tangent to this, in the early years of the south, property rights and an aversion to government interference lead to the “fuck you - not happening” attitude.
This flows directly into the cultures leaning towards the rights of gun owners. It is a distinct and treasured cultural icon (for many) in the Deep South.
People, particularly outsiders, vastly underestimate the cultural diversity of the US.
Years ago, when I moved from the Deep South to the “Yankeedom” (dark blue) up north, I felt like I’d landed on an alien planet.
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