2. Cultural Regionalism

The United States is a spacious country of varying terrains and climates. To get from New York to San Francisco one must travel almost 5/000 kilometers across regions of geographical extremes. Between the coasts there are forested mountains/ fertile plains/ arid deserts/ canyon lands, and wide plateaus. Much of the land is uninhabited. The population is concentrated in the Northeast, the South, around the Great Lakes, on the Pacific coast, and in metropolitan areas dotted over the remaining expanse of land in the agricultural Midwest and Western mountain and desert regions.

Each of the country's four main regions-the Northeast, the South, the West, and the Midwest—maintains a degree of cultural identity.

The Northeast

The Northeast, comprising the New England and Mid-Atlantic states, has traditionally been at the helm of the nation's economic and social progress. Compared with other regions, the Northeast is more urban, more industrial, and more culturally sophisticated. New Englanders often describe themselves as thrifty, reserved, and dedicated to hard work, qualities they inherited from their Puritan forefathers. A sense of cultural superiority sets Northeasterners apart from others. During the nineteenth century and well into this century, the Northeast produced most of the country's writers, artists, and scholars. New England's colleges and universities are known all over the country for their high academic standards. Harvard is widely considered the best business school in the nation. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology surpasses all others in economics and the practical sciences.

The economic and cultural dominance of New England has gradually receded since the Second World War. In the past decades, businesses and industries have been moving to warmer climates in the South and West. Many factories and mills have closed, and the population has stabilized or even declined. While areas of aging industry continue to suffer, some parts of New England are experiencing economic recovery. New high-tech industries are boostingforeign investment and employment.

The South

Regional identity has been most pronounced in the South, where the peculiarities of Southern history have played an important role in shaping the region's character. The South was originally settled by English Protestants who came not for religious freedom but for profitable farming opportunities. Most farming was carried out on single family farms, but some farmers, capitalizing on tobacco and cotton crops, became quite prosperous. Many of them established

large plantations. African slaves, shipped by the Spanish, Portuguese, and English, supplied labor for these plantations. These slaves were bought and sold as property. Even though the system of slavery was regarded by many Americans as unjust. Southern slaveowners defended it as an economic necessity. Even after the North began to industrialize after 1800, the South remained agricultural. As the century progressed, the economic interests of the manufacturing North became evermore divergent from those of the agrarian South. Economic and political tensions began to divide the nation and eventually led to the Civil War (1861—65). Most Northerners opposed slavery. The unresolved dispute over slavery was one of the issues which led to a national crisis in 1860. Eleven Southern states left the federal union and proclaimed themselves an independent nation. The war that broke out as a direct result was the most

bloody war in American history. With the South's surrender in 1865, Southerners were forced to accept many changes, which stirred up bitterness and resentment towards Northerners and

the Republican Party of the national government. During the post-war period of reconstruction which lasted until 1877, slavery was not only abolished, but blacks were given a voice in Southern government. Southerners opposed the Civil War (1861-65): the war between the Union (the North) and the Confederacy (the South).

For the next century white Southerners consistently voted for Democrats. The Civil War experience helps explain why Southerners have developed a reverence for the past and a resistance to change, and why the South is different from the rest of the country. Other regions have little in common with the South's bitterness over the Civil War, its one-party politics, agrarian traditions and racial tensions. Recent statistics show that the South differs from other regions in a number of ways. Southerners are more conservative, more religious, and more violent than the rest of the country. Because fewer immigrants were attracted to the less industrialized Southern states. Southerners are the most "native" of any region. Most black and white Southerners can trace their ancestry in this country back to before 1800. Southerners tend to be more mindful of social rank and have strong ties to hometown and family. Even today. Southerners tend to have less schooling and higher illiteracy rates than people from other regions, and pockets of poverty are scattered throughout the Southern states.

Americans of other regions are quick to recognize a Southerner by his/her dialect. Southern speech tends to be much slower and more musical. The Southern dialect characteristically uses more diphthongs: a one-syllable word such as yes is spoken in the South as two syllables, i/a-es. In addition, Southerners say "you all" instead of "you" as the second person plural. The South is also known for its music. In the time of slavery, black Americans created a new folk music, the negro spiritual. Later forms of black music which began in the South are blues and jazz. White Southerners created bluegrass mountain music, and most American country music has a Southern background. The South has been one of the most outstanding literary regions in the twentieth century. Novelists such as William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Thomas Wolfe, and Carson McCullers have addressed themes of the Southern experience such as nostalgia for the rural Southern past.