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When my Wife & first visited Charlotte in 2008, I was surprised at the degree of non-southern accents I heard. When frequenting shops around Rea Rd/51, I would say it was a 50/50, maybe 60/40, ratio, of Southerners, versus non-Southerners.
I know now that south Charlotte is predominantly transplants, and that there are a fair number of transplants in Downtown, South End, Dilworth, etc.
So I ask: is any part of Charlotte predominantly Southern?
I'm not interested in sparking any kind of debate in asking the question...Just asking to satisfy my curiosity.
Interesting question. Short answer is No - the entire city has grown. But I would put the question back to you though to understand what makes someone Southern?
Food? Music? Speech? If you have grandparents from here are you Southern? What about parents? How long does someone have to live in the south before they are considered Southern?
Tried and true Southerners are still here, just vastly outnumbered due to growth, like you said. I'm not anti growth by any means but there is something sad about a culture changing so rapidly. In middle school off of Randolph Road I remember my teachers talking about the tractors that used to ride up and down the street as late as the 50's. (it was a dirt road)
I know transplants who adopt southern culture and many folks born here who hide their accent. If you want to find people that have been here for a while, I think neighborhoods that have been around for a while and not changed so rapidly would be a good place to start. West Charlotte all the way through Shuffletown and Mount Holly has a strong history. That said, so do all of the small towns.
It's difficult to measure such a qualitative aspect of life. On top of that, it's very subjective. Southern to you can mean so many different things to another.
Here's a little fact about Southern cities with significant percentages of transplants from the North:
There are a lot more Southern people then you think, but they don't "act" Southern around you. It's largely unconscious, especially with speech. I am a case in point (I'm in Raleigh, not Charlotte, but Raleigh as well gets accused of "not being Southern"). My 'native' accent is Southern, a lifelong North Carolinian. But, I grew up in neighborhoods full of Northerners (in the 1960s/70s when IBM was transferring thousands of families from up north to Research Triangle Park). It got to where I would talk "Northern" when I was at my friends' houses, and "Southern" at home. That is common of people around both accents--it's like being "bilingual", just like those who speak Spanish at home and English out and about. Many of them don't even realize they are doing it, to some degree.
So my whole life, I have tended to unconsciously mirror the regional accent of the person I'm speaking to, and it probably goes beyond just accents, but other mannerisms.
The takeaway is, you can be around a lot of Southern people, but if they are talking to you, you won't get the "Southern" side of them and thus you will think you haven't been around any. It's very common in large Southern cities.
This does not, of course, mean, that there aren't places where you can find plenty of Southern accents from people who probably didn't grow up in "mixed" neighborhoods like I did, or even if they did, they retain the full southern accent. But accents in general tend to homogenize towards the mean, especially since the age of TV, where everybody hears "standard American" on TV. 50 years ago, you'd have heard a lot more varieties of accents everywhere, and a lot more Southern accents in the South, before TV homogenized them.
I thought we chased them all away. Thirty-some years ago, Charlotte was a quaint little, pretty place whose residents didn't quite realize what was happening in their town, why roads were being built like mad, and why roads were "jammed" with traffic until 6 pm.
I remember asking someone how to get to the airport shortly after I moved to the area, and the woman behind the counter drawled, "I'm not sure. I guess you can just follow the airplanes. There are a lot of 'em flying over there [pointing toward I-77]".
Getting directions to someplace in Charlotte isn't much better now. Instead of hearing a drawl, you'll hear a response not nearly as naive and sweet as 30 + years ago. "I dunno. Maybe take the freeway, I guess."
But the deliberate extinction of the local accent isn't fictitious. I've been surprised to hear employees at lunch speaking with an Appalachian accent when they're together. When they're at their desks, some tend to sound like they're from nowhere. If I wanted that "I'm from Nowhere" accent, I'd have moved to the midwest.
I've noticed some of my employees from back east losing their regional accents as well. One guy hasn't He's been in Charlotte almost as long as I have, and he hasn't lost his Brooklyn accent.
I like regional accents in their respective regions.
But it DOES seem as though the native Charlotteans have disappeared.
Thank you all, for your very thought provoking points! Forgive my follow up for being so short...y'all have given me much to think about.
(Can't imagine that a 30 years ago, CLT was a "small quaint town")
What's odd - and again, I am not writing this with the intention of sparking a debate - you can drive in many older parts of Charlotte, back to back with parts of Gaston County - and the "scenery" is so similar (housing; roads; streetlamps; foliage), but the demographic is so drastically different.
But accents in general tend to homogenize towards the mean, especially since the age of TV, where everybody hears "standard American" on TV. 50 years ago, you'd have heard a lot more varieties of accents everywhere, and a lot more Southern accents in the South, before TV homogenized them.
This is extremely true...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Essequamvideri
If you want to find people that have been here for a while, I think neighborhoods that have been around for a while and not changed so rapidly would be a good place to start. West Charlotte all the way through Shuffletown and Mount Holly has a strong history. That said, so do all of the small towns.
It's difficult to measure such a qualitative aspect of life. On top of that, it's very subjective. Southern to you can mean so many different things to another.
I suppose. But many have told me that if I had children born here, they would not be accepted as Southern, for the prerequisite is to have several generations here.
As much as I credit Charlotte's successes in reinventing itself as the "New South," I mourn the absence of things gone, even if I didn't personally know them (e.g. ice cream shops, restaurants, racetracks, etc)
The Derita area of north Charlotte is still pretty southern and "old Charlotte", to the degree it still exists, anyway. Go to Puckett's Farm Equipment and take in a bluegrass or country band one weekend night.
If you go to the homepage of this website, and go to the interactive data map, you can type in "Charlotte, NC" and then on the scroll down menu chose "Geographic Mobility- Born in another state", which will give you at display a map of this by census tract. Some of the people born outside of NC may have been born in the South and have a southern accent, but this will give you at least a rough idea.
For the larger Charlotte metro area outside of Mecklenburg County, here is also an interesting article.
Data for Stanly County (where Albemarle is located) and Anson County (where Wadesboro is located) wasn't available, but I'd be pretty certain both of those counties have a high percentage of native Southerners.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NDL
Thank you all, for your very thought provoking points! Forgive my follow up for being so short...y'all have given me much to think about.
(Can't imagine that a 30 years ago, CLT was a "small quaint town")
What's odd - and again, I am not writing this with the intention of sparking a debate - you can drive in many older parts of Charlotte, back to back with parts of Gaston County - and the "scenery" is so similar (housing; roads; streetlamps; foliage), but the demographic is so drastically different.
The demographic is different in Gaston but not quite the way you're thinking. Gaston & Cleveland received thousands of mill workers from Philadelphia in the 60s & 70s. Furniture workers from Grand Rapids also followed their jobs down here. Their children are still around. They're boomers. They're very much present in the area. It's not difficult to find them.
Coastal and Jowell, thanks for the fantastic info! Look forward to checking out Pucketts Farm ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by southbound_295
The demographic is different in Gaston but not quite the way you're thinking. Gaston & Cleveland received thousands of mill workers from Philadelphia in the 60s & 70s. Furniture workers from Grand Rapids also followed their jobs down here. Their children are still around. They're boomers. They're very much present in the area. It's not difficult to find them.
I'd imagine there are a lot of blue collar conservatives from Phila, that aren't much different than native Gastonians in mentality, no?
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- you can drive in many older parts of Charlotte, back to back with parts of Gaston County - and the "scenery" is so similar (housing; roads; streetlamps; foliage), but the demographic is so drastically different.
