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I'm 58. As one who lived most of my life in NY, followed by 12 years in Maryland and now live in Tennessee, I say this:
1. You can't choose where you are born and raised.
2. If you never live anywhere except in the state where you were born and raised, your opinions of other places are shaped by:
a. Hollywood
b. the urban elitist news media (think there's no life outside of big cities)
c. people who move near you from other states
People from the south are on the receiving end of (c) because of a cheaper cost of living, lower taxes and less snow. Generally speaking, "Yankees" do not tend to choose the South because they are interested in being a part of that culture...and that's where the problems start. They try to make the place over into what they just fled and they bring their (a) and (b) shaped prejudices with them. As a result of the invasion (large numbers of people moving South and settling into "transplant planned communities" that try to gate out the natives and bring their old world into the new community instead of embracing the new one and trying to blend in), there is animosity.
If it was so great where you lived before why didn't you stay there? Do you know why it was too expensive where you lived before you moved to a conservative state? Do you know that by you moving en masse into Southern communities, you force the natives to pay more property taxes because roads, police, fire, utilities, schools, hospitals are needed to support your invasion. Do you realize when you privatize the areas around lakes and huge developments and golf courses go up where there was once fishing and hunting (things you don't usually do), you deprive natives of the recreation they've done for most of their lives or make it more difficult for them to do it.
When regulation-happy Yankees come in en masse and change the voting patterns of a state and towns to support making the new town "Little Yankeeland" to accommodate your demands, long time natives are incensed. Again, if it was so great where you lived before why didn't you stay there and pay through the nose for the way you want to live?
And then to make matters worse, you call the natives "stupid."
If you are from the north, you don't actually get an invasion of southerners who want to live there so you have no idea what it's like.
Nice blanket judgments. Very happy I never met any of your ilk when this northerner moved down South.
Why did I move? My parent's generation, the housing bubble, and the incredible amount of people who RELOCATED to NYC for work (yep, we get southerners up there too) who were perfectly happy to accept starting salaries of $40k for master's degrees work kinda forced us out. I DON'T agree with the politics up north - I don't agree with supporting 90% of NYC with welfare, I don't agree with paying $10 bucks every time I need to cross a bridge in order to do so. Salaries were horribly low, and didn't even match the increase of rent.
We were approached by companies down south - Yes, sorry to tell you, but the southern companies WANTED us here. Why? Because there were no locals qualified to do the work. They doubled my husband's salary, I found a job where my salary jumped by 10%, and we went from being renters with three hours of daily commuting to buying our first home (in an older, "southern" neighborhood), and starting a new family - and finally managing to pay down student loans, and have a life outside of work. We visit NYC once a year, and enjoy the city moreso than when we lived there and couldn't afford to enjoy it. If anything, our northern friends are probably sick of hearing us talk about the great aspects of living down south.
NYC can't get "invaded" by southerners... they would just mesh right in, and who knows, maybe a Little Dixie would sprout up next to Chinatown if southerners really did arrive in a swarm. People up there don't label others and exclude based on that - how can they, it's a melting pot!
I don't know what type of people you are meeting, but if that's your general attitude, I'm not surprised if you're getting a dose of northern lip.
Sounds like urbanites or inner suburb folks. I am a token Yankee brought up in, at the time, rural upstate New York, and been in New Hampshire for almost 30 years. I, and my friends, do not do any of the things 2mares complains about and try to treat everyone as Lakewooder suggests. Not all of us Yankees are jerks.
IMHO the difference is city/suburb vrs rural. I expect to move to the rural southwest in a few years when I retire. One of the first things I will do is learn Spanish so I can converse with my neighbors.
I consider Yankees to be folks born and raised in New Hampshire, Vermont or Maine (sometimes upstate New York) small town and/or rural areas. They are generally quiet, church going, frugal, very sensible people with a deep sense of community. Just surviving a northern New England winter develops a certain amount of grit characterized by getting the chores done now. Small town sea coast Mainers are as tough as they get. Yankees have very little patience with posers or fools.
The loud obnoxious north eastern city folk are not Yankees of any sort. They are loud obnoxious city folk and could be from anywhere.
This has to be one of my biggest pet peeves, getting people to understand that the term "Yankee" refers to natives of a very small geographical area, and not the whole northeast. Real Yankees are not whiners, complainers or demanding.
I have spent very little time, comparitively, in the actual South, been out West all my life, but this 'issue' seems to me, to be a matter of what term is used to describe a specific type of person, in a specific region. My wife is from WV, while visiting here folks back there, I heard the word 'yankee' used more often than I have at Civil War re enactments. Not in the context of the Civil War so much as to describe those who have moved in from places like Ohio, PA, NY, MA etc, that have tried to bring what they were supposedly trying to leave behind with them. We have the same view of urbanites from CA, in particular, moving in around here, and standing , aghast, at the way we do things. The South has a rich heritage, so does the West, and those of us born and raised to that culture and heritage are proud of it. We take offense to people wanting to change it to be more in line from where they came from, rather than accepting and conforming to the way we are. It's OUR home and OUR culture. Trying to change it is offensive to us. I can identify with people from the South who see 'yankees' as interlopers. Different terms, same type of people. Nobody likes to be told the life they were born and raised to is wrong, by someone who has no clue.
"Yankee" has disputed origins - some think it's from an Indian word, some think it's from Dutch, some have other theories.
What we DO know is that the Colonial Americans took on the name "Yankee" ("Yankee Doodle" actually) as a point of pride, knowing they were called "Yankee" derisively by the British and other Europeans. So the truest meaning of it applies to all Americans, and you will notice that British and Australian and other Europeans will still call us all "Yanks" to this day, regardless of whether you're from NY or FL or CA or HI or CO or any other state. We are all "Yankees" in this sense.
When the Civil War happened, the southerners fancied themselves being non-Americans and adopted the practice of calling non-Confederates "Yankees", to show that Northerners are Americans and that they are not. This has stuck around to this day.
Amongst Americans in general, particularly Northerners, "Yankee" refers to New Englanders, because they are the ones who really took on this label of "Yankee" with such pride and it is such a part of their heritage to be called "Yankees". Their adoption of the term caused it to apply to the rest of us because New England represented the densest concentration of colonists and was the seat of government.
Within New England, the term is generally used for Vermont, NH, and Maine folks. This is probably because those are the parts of New England that remain most true to the old fashioned New England lifestyle and represent what being a "Yankee" was all about - working hard, surviving cold winters, living on farms or other small business, living in rural areas, etc. A Boston businessman is too much of a capitalist to be a "Yankee" and lives too cushy a life compared to the Vermont Maple Sugarer who crafts syrup with his hands in the cold winters.
EB White wrote a good poem about what a Yankee is:
To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.
As for "Damn Yankees" - here's what I think they are:
Southerners say that "Damn Yankees" are Northerners who move to the south and stay there. I think that phenomenon is natural, and has less to do with these folks being Northerners and more to do with their being malcontents. It gives the rest of us up North a bad name which we don't deserve.
The rude, loud-mouthed, obnoxious jerks who live here are like that here, too, before they move down south. We are aware of them - they are too loud to ignore. All they talk about here is how everything here stinks - everything's too expensive, too crowded, too imperfect, too this, too that, blah blah blah - they never stop whining. All they talk about is how they can't wait to move to NC or GA or TN or wherever else, where for a fraction of the cost of living in NJ they will live in a mansion to rival Graceland and live the life of Reilly and it's so much better than NJ or NY or CT or wherever else they're whining about.
Then, when they actually move, they take their malcontent attitudes with them. It's no surprise that they complain to their southern neighbors about everything. "The Chinese food here stinks!" "It's boring here!" "My kid is picking up a SOUTHERN accent!!! " blah blah blah blah blah.......
Then southerners start thinking (rightfully so) that these yankees are a bunch of whiney, pushy, rude, obnoxious, loud jerks. And they're right. But then they think, by association, that this is how the people who still live in NY/NJ/NE etc. must be. Well, there's some truth to that - we always have obnoxious, rude, loud malcontents here, but most of them eventually move away to the south; but while they're here we are stuck with them. Still, they are a minority of the people here.
It's typical for a "damn Yankee" to have two faces. Typically, they will boast to their southern neighbors how much better NY or NJ was - the food was better, the schools were better, the mass transit was better, the people were better, blah blah blah, and they will just as easily turn around to their friends back up north and do the opposite, boasting that now their house is better and bigger, their costs are lower, the people are nicer, blah blah blah.
Most of these Damn Yankees are just malcontents, who, no matter where they live, must be obnoxious, rude, loud whiners. They truly believe that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. They give the rest of us a bad name.
And it's true that these Damn Yankees, after berating their home state and talking up the state to which they move, will try to turn their new state into the old one. All the Damn Yankees I know or have met will boast to me that "Well we have so many NYers/NJ'ans here that we have everything here now! We have good pizza here now!!! [which is always a fail] We have a mall just like the one in Jersey now!!! We are petitioning to get rid of the farms nearby so that we won't have to smell cow crap!!! It's just like NJ but cheaper!!! We just got another shopping center with a Borders, Cheesecake Factory, Staples, Chili's, Crate & Barrel, Home Depot, just like we had in Jersey! Plus we got a SUPER Walmart, even BETTER than Jersey!!!"
They don't want to live in NC or TN or GA - they want to live in a New New Jersey, one that they can afford a bigger house in. That's all it comes down to - they are selfish people.
If you are from the north, you don't actually get an invasion of southerners who want to live there so you have no idea what it's like.
What??? The northern industrial cities were definitely "invaded" by southerners after WWII thru the '70s. They came up to work in the auto plants and other manufacturing.
The Down River area of Metro Detroit is full of people from TN and KY and their children/grandchildren. There is a reason why Country music and NASCAR is popular there. It was joked that Akron was the the "capital" of WVa and in Chicago that I-55 was built so that the southerners could go home on weekends. In the Northeast the cities experienced migration of people from the Carolinas and other southeast areas.
So yes we in the North that are old enough do know what it is like to "get an invasion of southerners who want to live there."
To me the definition of a yankee connotates a hard working, independent minded, responsible and thoughtful person with real family values and a great work ethic.The southerner stereotype brings thoughts of laziness, flagrant prejudice, brown nosing,grudge holding,lynch mob mentality, phoniness and hypocrisy.I see southerners of being jealous and angry of northerers and the yankee spirit.The west is in a different league and story but has the same attitudes towards the "yankee" spirited individuals in many areas, including a lynch mob, prejudical, and gang mentality.
One thing you probably wont here a yankee complain about is working, he may complain about someone he works with, but if he complains about having to work he is probably not a yankee.
To me the definition of a yankee connotates a hard working, independent minded, responsible and thoughtful person with real family values and a great work ethic.The southerner stereotype brings thoughts of laziness, flagrant prejudice, brown nosing,grudge holding,lynch mob mentality, phoniness and hypocrisy.I see southerners of being jealous and angry of northerers and the yankee spirit.The west is in a different league and story but has the same attitudes towards the "yankee" spirited individuals in many areas, including a lynch mob, prejudical, and gang mentality.
One thing you probably wont here a yankee complain about is working, he may complain about someone he works with, but if he complains about having to work he is probably not a yankee.
I think I see why you would feel like Southerners wouldn't be very welcoming. Isn't it obvious to you? I'd also bet a dollar that your screen name isn't at all representative of how you present yourself IRL.
I'll say again, I'm a YANKEE and I haven't had one bit of trouble living in the South for nearly 20 years. However, it might have something to do with the fact that I don't think there is something innately better about being from the North or South. I'd never presume to paint with such a broad brush as some of you here. People are people wherever you go...good and bad, dumb and smart, redneck and sophisticated, hardworking and lazy, bigoted and tolerant...one region has no claim on better or worse.
Sounds like urbanites or inner suburb folks. I am a token Yankee brought up in, at the time, rural upstate New York, and been in New Hampshire for almost 30 years. I, and my friends, do not do any of the things 2mares complains about and try to treat everyone as Lakewooder suggests. Not all of us Yankees are jerks.
IMHO the difference is city/suburb vrs rural. I expect to move to the rural southwest in a few years when I retire. One of the first things I will do is learn Spanish so I can converse with my neighbors.
He's right, this is more of a rural vs. urban issue than anything. I grew up in urban Massachusetts and had some friends from rural Maine. They called us Massh*les, which basically is the same as Yankee to a southerner.
It makes one wonder, if that is the case, why so many northerners are moving south.
I explained it all in my earlier post (post 25) - why northerners are moving south, why they move and then try to change the place they moved to.
They're selfish and self-centered. And that's the bulk of northerners who move, not all of them, and it's certainly not representative of the northerners who stay in the north.
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" blah blah blah blah blah.......
What??? The northern industrial cities were definitely "invaded" by southerners after WWII thru the '70s. They came up to work in the auto plants and other manufacturing. 
I'd also bet a dollar that your screen name isn't at all representative of how you present yourself IRL.