I lived in NOVA. A large part could be considered the mid Atlantic which is a different mindset and culture than the South completely but let's not be mistaken. Take your ass to Manassas and it will feel like the the deep south quick! We confuse Fairfax county and Loudoun with all of NOVA when it's not the case. That said, most of NOVA doesn't look, act or behave like the South.
Central Virginia is culturally very Southern. What are you talking about? And obviously the same is true for the Tidewater area as well as Richmond.
DC doesn't feel southern but obviously Black folks who are multiple generation locals tend to be more Southern but they aren't the norm. The norm is it's a liberal ass Mid Atlantic city on avg.
I wouldn't call it North. Mid Atlantic is a different set of ideals and standards. Maryland don't function like New York state or even Pennsylvania
The Mid-Atlantic had a historically different definition than it does today. Today, and has been the case for decades now, the Mid-Atlantic is essentially the areas that are tied into traditionally Chesapeake Bay culture. That isn't a culture completely different from the South, if anything, it's a uniquely southern culture...
Because the Mid-Atlantic also includes areas that are part of the traditional M/A, it isn't a solely southern subculture. It's a transitional blend of both North and South on the East Coast...
When I first moved to the East Coast as a child, we moved to SW DC, then to Woodbridge. So I'm familiar with NoVa...
DC naturally grows magnolia trees and other southern vegetation that can't naturally grow further north, climactically. To say DC doesn't look or feel southern at all would be false when I can see shyt there I would never see in Buffalo, Boston, even Philly. I do think DC today is more characteristically northern than southern, but this idea DC isn't southern at all is only thought by people who don't know what they are looking at or listening to...
There's more examples of "the South" in DC besides this....
Nothing in NoVa is reminiscent of the Deep South. South, for sure, but "deep" south? Hell nah...
Virginia is a speed trap state, notoriously so, they earn more money from ticketing speeders than almost anywhere. That's not indicative of racism, though I'm sure an element of racially profiling exists. I lived there and consider myself a Virginian though I'm not a native, and got two tickets but never felt profiled...
Richmond is southern but different from virtually any other place in the South you can name---->unless you include Baltimore, DC, or Norfolk in your southern definition. Richmond has more in common with all three of those cities than any other city you can name in the entire rest of the South...
Rich will never not have its history, that shyt is in the books, and that's the main reason people call it southern. And because of its history, the city will always have some strong southern indicators that won't disappear. But it's currently (and has been for at least 15-20 years) undergoing the same cultural shift and transformation that DC and Baltimore,
two historically southern cities, went through before it...
Here's the kicker, the reality is that there is hundreds of years that tie Bmore--DC--Rich together culturally, and these areas were always different from the rest of the South. If we could all go back in time 200-300 years, while southern, these areas were probably always different. Baltimore and DC are larger and were hit with the cultural shift sooner, it's just spread to Richmond now and if we're alive 35-40 years from now, there will be entire generations of Americans who will find it hard to relate anything southern about Rich besides its history---->the same way there's a generation of Americans today who don't view Baltimore or DC as southern despite southern characteristics still present in and around both...
