To some people, the answer to the question, "Is Virginia in the South?" is obvious.
"Yes!" they might affirm confidently.
"Of course not," others may say with just as much confidence as the previous. So what's the answer and what are some that markers identify someone or someplace as southern*? Here are just a few:
1. Southerners have a drawl
2. In a given group of teenagers, someone will be wearing either camouflage OR Simply Southern shirts
3. "Y'all" is used without judgment
4. At least one family in the community proudly waves/wears some form of Confederate flag or paraphernalia
5. Sweet tea is greatly preferred to...*shudder*...unsweetened tea
6. Country music can be heard blasting out of every pick up truck
7. A fair percentage of the community owns a gun and enjoys hunting
Historically, Virginia is a very important state. After all, two of the first three presidents were from Virginia. But when you think of George Washington, do you picture him as a southerner? What about Thomas Jefferson? I can tell you that after taking US history down the street from Monticello, I consider Jefferson a southerner as his house was built from slave labor, and he had an affair with his slave Sally Hemings. This is significant because in terms of the atrocities of slavery, Virginia is unquestionably a southern state. Jefferson was no exception to the norm; there were many plantation owners, and slavery was common in Virginia. In fact, according to the 1860 census, as a percentage of the population, 31% of the people in Virginia were enslaved. Additionally, Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy when the South seceded. This evidence all points to Virginia being a southern state.
That being said, when we (high school students 20 minutes outside of Charlottesville) were asked in one of our classes, "Who here thinks that you live in the South?", the majority of the students did not raise their hands. Our teacher who had asked the question hailed from New York, and laughed at us because he considered us all to be Southerners. After all, my high school had a day where everyone dressed up in camo, which I have the feeling is a distinctly Southern thing.
In point of fairness, the class that was sampled was an AP US history class. Most of the people in the class diddn't have much of an accent, were looking at schools in the northern part of the country, and certainly weren't going around with Confederate flags. Most of their parents immigrated to the area because of the University of Virginia, where many were professors or doctors.
Now, in non-advanced classes, a different story was told. Many of the families of these students had always lived in the area, in part because they didn't have the finances to go anywhere different. These students proudly donned baseball caps with Confederate flags. They would go hunting almost every weekend in the fall and they both sounded and looked distinctly Southern.
This divide is just in one high school in a very small town in central Virginia. NoVa (Northern Virginia) is a different story entirely because it's basically Washington, DC. If I think my part of Virginia is well-off, then NoVa is another step or two above us. Southwestern Virginia is basically West Virginia, so there are a ton of mountains, trees, and not much else. Since I don't live in these regions, I can't speak to their relative southern-ness other than stereotypes that central Virginians have formed about them. That being said, if you were to ask me if I think Virginia is in the south, I would have to say that yes, yes it is. But just barely.
*I'm talking about relatively rural areas. Cities/large urban areas in the south fall into a different category entirely.
