AHC: Wank the best traits of the South, along with the worst traits of the Northeast/Midwest.

When I say best traits of the South, I mean think of everything positive you associate with South and have the become it's dominant reputation in pop media. Like whenever it's represented like in movies as being "The South" and not just "The Country", instead of showing uneducated, religious zealots with horrible racism, Confederate flags and etc, they show basically the opposite. Just see how long the first link is compared to the third, and basically do what it takes to reverse it.

When I say the worst traits of the Northeast/Mid West, I mean like having poor labour conditions, de facto segregated ghettos with various minorities, highly polluting factories, jerk ass urbanites, xenophobic suburbanites, elitist old Money types like in the Great Gatsby, etc. Basically make the common depiction of the Northeast be Gotham style cities, and the Mid-West be whatever negative things there are there. I don't know too many negative things about it , but I have to include the Midwest since it's usually included in the "North", I believe.

Edit: When I say Midwest, I am mostly including Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana. The rest you can leave alone.
 
An interesting idea! How would you go about doing this?
I suppose slavery could be abandoned in the South earlier than OTL, like Virginia abolishes it, due to no Turner's rebellion to make people fear Blacks. This leads to no civil war, which would allow states to have stronger control over their laws with the federal government being Weaker. During the 60s, the South turns to industrialization and so the southern economy grows, making the South richer than OTL. Immigrants from Europe start to head to the South, and so a "racial whitening" agenda comes up with black intermarriage to various white immigrant ethnicities being encouraged, like how it was in OTL Brazil. An intellectual movement occurs in the South as people are encouraged by a new Christian religious movement to read the Bible and discover it's wisdom for themselves instead of listening to pastors that could be spreading lies. A culture that values education and reading begin to emerge with intellectualism being encouraged.

Yeah, I just made this stuff up off the top of my head, but it's supposed to be a wank and I am open to any ideas. I'll do the North later.
 
With the North, there won't be too many laws that try to regulate safety in factories due to a weaker US government. The wealthy will frequently use Pinkerton detective agencies to stomp out labour and state laws, being written by plutocrats, won't be able to stop them. Stuff like Gangs of New York will be a common scene across Northern industrial cities, which will become as polluted similarly to Victorian London and modern day Chinese cities. New York will be seen as the "storm before the calm" by immigrants, as they travel to New York only to get to the rest of the US, especially in the Southern industrial cities, where European immigrants are treated better, regardless if they're Southern abd Eastern Europeans, as their won't be any immigrant restrictions due to ,again, a weaker US govt. In the North, the American dream of working yourself to become rich( legally anyways...) doesn't exist as the WASP elite do they're best to stay dominant and prevent new money from moving in. In this world, any Henry Fords would want to move to the South, as in the industrial North, people like the Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, etc, would have that person shot as soon as they're innovation took off, and then patent and sell it themselves, after stealing the idea. Wages are suppressed and child labour lasts into the twentieth century. Wealth inequality is very high. Gated communities are a common sight in the suburbs as the people who are wealthy enough to live in northern suburbs are wealthy enough to have private communities, away from the poor and angry masses. Government bribing is very common.

All this off the top of my head and it's probably unrealistic, but they are ideas.
 
I don't really associate anything positive with the South.
That's most likely because pop media shows almost nothing positive about the South. The point of this thread is to create a world where people would have positive associations with the South. Also, you really associate nothing positive with the South. When I think of positive things in the South, I think of Atlanta, Miami, Elvis, New Orleans, Jazz, cornbread, southern hospitality, Martin Luther King and other stuff/people/food that's from the South.
 
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I'll give it a shot. Bacon's Rebellion succeeds and the alliance of poor whites and blacks march to Williamsburg, overthrowing the colonial government and declaring an independent Chesapeake republic. The English Crown attempts to reconquer the colonies but end up failing and are eventually forced to fight a two-pronged war when the New England colonies, filled with Cromwell supporters, decide to declare independence themselves. As race-based slavery has yet to become normalized, interracial relationships between blacks and whites are accepted to a much greater degree than IOTL; the English navy's dominance of the seas guarantees that they would not be seeing any new shipments of slaves or colonists. Without reliance of the Crown and a small manpower in said republic, relationship between Virginia and the Indians is much more amicable and you would see the slow incorporation of native tribes into TTL Southron society. No slavery and a South dominated by smaller farms will make it much more egalitarian.
 
I'll give it a shot. Bacon's Rebellion succeeds and the alliance of poor whites and blacks march to Williamsburg, overthrowing the colonial government and declaring an independent Chesapeake republic. The English Crown attempts to reconquer the colonies but end up failing and are eventually forced to fight a two-pronged war when the New England colonies, filled with Cromwell supporters, decide to declare independence themselves. As race-based slavery has yet to become normalized, interracial relationships between blacks and whites are accepted to a much greater degree than IOTL; the English navy's dominance of the seas guarantees that they would not be seeing any new shipments of slaves or colonists. Without reliance of the Crown and a small manpower in said republic, relationship between Virginia and the Indians is much more amicable and you would see the slow incorporation of native tribes into TTL Southron society. No slavery and a South dominated by smaller farms will make it much more egalitarian.
Nice, great to see more people are responding. Hope it keeps going.
 
That's most likely because pop media shows almost nothing positive about the South. The point of this thread is to create a world where people would have positive associations with the South. Also, you really associate nothing positive with the South. When I think of positive things in the South, I think of Atlanta, Miami, Elvis, New Orleans, Jazz, cornbread, southern hospitality, Martin Luther King and other stuff/people/food that's from the South.

I think of Atlanta as a poster child of urban sprawl and nightmarish traffic which I'm witnessing my own city (Nashville) gradually adopting. I don't think of much positive about that. Miami isn't even a southern city--they don't call it the "capital of Latin America" for nothing. Plus there's always the talk of splitting Florida into two states--that part of Florida is simply not southern in culture.

But I see your point--most all of those are cultural, aside from Martin Luther King who had to exist because of a very, very negative thing existing in the south which to this day lingers on. I suppose if you wanna turn the South into the North with associated immigration and industry you might be able to continue that. One thing I find very interesting about parts of New England (like Western Massachusetts/Springfield area) is you have a "Polish town", "Portuguese town", "Irish town", "Italian town", usually right next to each other. If you had that in the South, you'd no doubt see some very interesting cross-cultural fusions, interesting foods, interesting music, etc.
 
But I see your point--most all of those are cultural, aside from Martin Luther King who had to exist because of a very, very negative thing existing in the south which to this day lingers on. I suppose if you wanna turn the South into the North with associated immigration and industry you might be able to continue that. One thing I find very interesting about parts of New England (like Western Massachusetts/Springfield area) is you have a "Polish town", "Portuguese town", "Irish town", "Italian town", usually right next to each other. If you had that in the South, you'd no doubt see some very interesting cross-cultural fusions, interesting foods, interesting music, etc.

Chicopee, Ludlow, Holyoke... I'm trying to think of a town that is very Italian in that neighborhood, but I'm coming short. However, aside from sports (basketball and hockey, along with important contributions to golf), and the literary culture associated with the universities just a few towns north, there really isn't much cultural flowering over there. Everyone just assimilated to generic New England American. Hell, Chicopee was a French town before it was a Polish town.
 
I'm not kidding.
I think of Atlanta as a poster child of urban sprawl and nightmarish traffic which I'm witnessing my own city (Nashville) gradually adopting. I don't think of much positive about that. Miami isn't even a southern city--they don't call it the "capital of Latin America" for nothing. Plus there's always the talk of splitting Florida into two states--that part of Florida is simply not southern in culture.

But I see your point--most all of those are cultural, aside from Martin Luther King who had to exist because of a very, very negative thing existing in the south which to this day lingers on. I suppose if you wanna turn the South into the North with associated immigration and industry you might be able to continue that. One thing I find very interesting about parts of New England (like Western Massachusetts/Springfield area) is you have a "Polish town", "Portuguese town", "Irish town", "Italian town", usually right next to each other. If you had that in the South, you'd no doubt see some very interesting cross-cultural fusions, interesting foods, interesting music, etc.
How come that part of Florida isn't considered Southern in culture? It's still in the South and that is it's culture. I don't, to me it sounds like someone saying a person isn't this or that, because they aren't a walking stereotype/caricature of the people they come from. Also I would think Mexico city is called the "capital of Latin America" since it's the largest city in Latin America, depending on how you measure it.
 
POD: Virginia votes to gradually abolish slavery in 1824 and the rest of the South slowly follows its lead. The main opponents of abolition continue to be Northern, which was OTL until W. L. Garrison and after Nat Turner's Rebellion. Slightly more Wilberforcian influence could push the South over the edge. If you really want to walk the worst of Northern, have TTL's Dred Scott come down from an extreme Northern-controlled Supreme Court who overturns a state's slavery ban, compensated or uncompensated, as being a denial of property rights, particularly as African-descendants cannot be citizens (OTL Dred Scott logic) and causes slavery to be legal in all states again. Northern meddling, instead of being of the abolitionist stripe, is instead of the fire-eater type, while the South is looking to gradually end the costly institution. You don't get a Civil War, but tensions are high, and the South eventually has to secure a TTL 13th Amendment because slavery is seen as uneconomical and dehumanizing, which it gets from border and western states plus a few of the mid-Atlantic states.

Brazil-style racial whitening is an interesting concept for this version of the South to do with Eastern and Southern European immigrants as an "acceptable" form of miscegenation. Expounding upon the Dickensian and Kleptocratic nature of the Industrial north, it becomes an unappealing place for immigrants, while there's agricultural opportunities in the South. Earlier discovery of mosquitoes as the vectors for yellow fever and malaria, leading to significant drainage of swamps and marshes would make the South less hostile. To get a more humane Southern industrial economy, perhaps have Henry Heinz either grow up in or move to the South (let's say Tennessee) and start his company there. It was well-known for providing excellent working conditions and a lot of social services/support to its workers and was a "model citizen." Leveraging Heinz's Christianity, you see other factories recognize the competitive advantages in attracting a long-term workforce. In this way, you get a Robber Baron North and an everyman "fair wage for a fair job" populist South.

To wank the worst tendencies of the North, have harsher neighborhood segregation laws, a Klan-analogue fighting against any miscegenation, and the Pinkerton agency being a de-facto secret police in northern societies.
 
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