Is North Carolina considered a Southern state? What a silly question | Opinion
Is North Carolina considered the South?
For those of us who actually live in North Carolina, the answer might seem obvious, even if you aren’t brushed up on your history. Yes, of course, this is the South. We drink sweet tea and eat barbecue. We say things like “Bless your heart.” We’re featured in “Southern Living” magazine. Case closed, right?
Apparently not. To some people, whether North Carolina is part of the South seems to be an open question. That much became clear over the weekend, when a user on X (formerly Twitter) shared a video of a man and a woman discussing the topic on a podcast.
“North Carolina is not the South,” the woman says at the beginning of the video. “It’s not Southern. It’s like, the culture here, it’s not South.”
“I don’t know, ‘cause North Carolina got some country-a-- parts,” the man responds.
“Charlotte,” the woman says. “It’s not South … Charlotte is not country.”
Oh. OK.
If Charlotte isn’t the South because it’s too urban, then what exactly do they think the South is? Do they think it’s just barren and undeveloped, without a single metropolitan area in sight? What about Atlanta, or Nashville, or New Orleans?
They do consider South Carolina part of the South, though. Yet, somehow, Charlotte still isn’t, despite the fact that South Carolina cities are part of the Charlotte metropolitan area.
The man went on to explain that people from up north associate the South with “open fields” and “big a-- bugs,” so Charlotte and North Carolina more generally are more “comfortable” alternatives. Because we don’t have fields or bugs here, I guess.
The clip received 7.1 million views, and thousands of replies from people who couldn’t quite believe what they were hearing. North Carolina is south of the Mason-Dixon line, they pointed out. It was part of the Confederacy! Our streets and schools still bear the names of Confederate generals! Agriculture is a huge part of our economy!
Sure, North Carolina isn’t the Deep South, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a Southern state. While cities like Raleigh and Charlotte may not “feel” Southern, you only have to drive outside of the city limits to find the stereotypical scene you’re looking for — which includes fields and bugs, apparently.
North Carolina is a lot of things, and it’s much more diverse than people give it credit for. It’s not full of backwards-thinking rednecks, as the caricatures might lead you to believe. Sure, it was part of the Confederacy, but it was also home to the most famous sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement, and Charlotte was a national leader for school integration. We have a rich Black history and one of the largest Indigenous populations in the nation. Beyond sweet tea and barbecue, we’re the birthplace of Southern staples, like Bojangles and Cook-Out and Texas Pete and Cheerwine.
But the South isn’t a monolith, either. It’s cities like Atlanta and, yes, Charlotte — but it’s also small towns and communities that are so sparse it takes 30 minutes to get to the closest grocery store. It’s purple states like North Carolina and red states like Mississippi. It’s the Bible Belt and the Black Belt simultaneously.
In all of this, though, there seems to be an implication that being Southern is a bad thing. Or that “the South” is synonymous with “country,” which is reductive. When people say that North Carolina is “the comfortable South,” it implies that the rest of the South is uncomfortable and undesirable. They want the Southern cuisine and the Southern hospitality, but they don’t actually want to live here. Well, that’s too bad. North Carolina is a Southern state in pretty much every way that matters — culturally, geographically, historically. We’re quite proud of it, actually.
This story was originally published December 19, 2023 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Is North Carolina considered a Southern state? What a silly question | Opinion."
