Looked up hominy so that would be different. Bacon makes everything good. They’d like that. Johnnycakes - stone ground corn, hot water and a little salt, pan fried without fuss until golden with lacey edges. Straight from the Native Americans in this area.
I think my kids would be most excited about the fruit down south. Especially peaches. We have one peach tree in our yard that we battle with the squirrels for dominance.
Isn’t grits otherwise known as polenta in non-south places?
@ucbalumnus No, no, no. Completely different texture.
And then the BBQ. I’ve seem Pitmasters. That would be delicious. And any food from New Orleans and real Mexican food. And the music. Jazz, Zydeco, gospel. NYC has a great Jazz scene. DH’s cousin is a pretty famous jazz musician based there. We love our jazz and there must be some cool clubs.
My biggest concern about sending my kids down south is the sun. We’re so fair and skin cancer runs in the family. But besides that it would be a grand adventure.
I agree completely, and I think that’s why he was drawn to attending Clemson and a college in the South (plus wanting a large university with school spirit). It’s upsetting when you hear a family friend is unhappy in his college choice and is having trouble making friends. I will report back when I hear more from him about his experience. I may be jumping to conclusions that cultural differences are to blame in his case.
@ucbalumnus He is white, from a middle class Catholic family. His sisters both go to Jesuit colleges, Georgetown and Fordham, and are loving their experiences.
Here are the religious demographics of South Carolina at http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/state/south-carolina/ . Whether or not being a member of a smaller minority religion matters is something that is likely dependent on various other factors, like how important religion is to him.
@gearmom Your wiki link is about Africans who immigrate to the US.
I’m a pretty liberal and not religious Senior at a private HS in NC (born and raised), and I’d be happy to offer a more current perspective of schools down here… I know lots of people at Clemson, Wake, Chapel Hill, Ole Miss, etc. Different schools have different feels, and yes there’s a general vibe of the South and things that come with that, but you really have to look school to school if you have specific concerns about that.
There are style differences that are sometimes easy to see between north and south (as well as between east coast, midwest, and west coast, for that matter). I know when their cousin described wearing a dress and heels to football games at UVA, my kids were sort of baffled. And, yes, my kids say “youse guys” rather than “y’all” and rarely say “yes, maam/sir.” But, honestly, beyond those surface differences, people are people. I’ve been charmed by daughter’s friends from the south…and by her friends from NYC.
Regional differences are an adventure! Enjoy!
@TQfromtheU Weird. Don’t know how I grabbed that.
Restaurants in the South aren’t segregated.
^Are churches segregated as in you are not welcome if you are not a certain race or are there different varieties of religions. So I guess you could say that Arabs are segregated to mosques.
They just tend to self segregate. My church has a few African American members and I imagine many of the AA churches have some white members.
Re: #75
Here is an article about segregation and diversity in churches, and how worshipers and pastors see it:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2015/january/sunday-morning-segregation-most-worshipers-church-diversity.html
(Again, not South-specific.)
Arab people include members of many religions, including both Sunni and Shia Islam, various kinds of Christianity (e.g. Orthodox, Catholic, Copt), Druze, and Bahai. There are also people who describe themselves as Arab Jewish, though there is some controversy over the term.
According to https://web.archive.org/web/20060601221810/http://www.aaiusa.org/arab-americans/22/demographics , most Arab American people are Christian, and only about a quarter are Muslim.
@ucbalumnus I know that you can be Arab and not Muslim.Or Greeks who choose Greek Orthodox. Or Italians who choose Catholicism. There are many groups who simply have traditions and customs that they prefer and they may choose to worship with similar people. I think that is fine. If people are choosing to self segregate, I don’t see a problem if their places of worship if open to all.
@veruca I don’t see a problem with choosing to be part of a community with a common heritage. If everyone is welcome, I don’t see the big deal of being able to worship the way you enjoy.
You have received good information about several schools in the South. If your daughter is seeking a more liberal campus, then look to the cities. Cities like Nashville is very blue with democratic majorities and even liberals. Southerners are church attenders and often Baptist or evangelical or Church of Christ. It is necessary to distinguish Christian schools like Belmont (great in music) Collete from schools like Vanderbilt that are excellent academically and socially. Nashville is wonderful! College towns are probably a better match than colleges in smaller communities.
Nashville is very different from when I was a,child. My family was democratic with a liberal bent. Race and religion were core socially. My grandparents were wonderful about getting Catholic granddaughters to Mass, but expected us to toe the mark such as dressing for dinner and saying yes mam or yes sir when speaking with adults. There are traditional black behavior that still happens to a small degree with some AA teens such as calling me Miss Susie. Neighborhoods, shopping malls and schools are about as integrated as elsewhere. A big difference I see in various areas is architecture. Nashville is growing fast with lots of buildings that look like made of Legos
You have to visit, OP. Some things will be different even though regionalism in the US has certainly decreased. See how you feel about the differences that remain and the culture of this particular school.
About the segregation in daily life: I find it to be much less prevalent all the time in the southern town in which I grew up. I attended integrated schools, but the neighborhoods and churches were still pretty segregated (by habit and economic class, not law). Now the neighborhoods and churches are more mixed. I am visiting home right now and staying in a hotel with a good sized African American clientele. I don’t share a hotel with this many black people when I go to NYC.(Hotel is same chain, same kind of hotel, much much whiter in NYC.)
Just an anecdote, just one woman’s impression. I’ll say again that the South isn’t as different as it used to be, but you will find some subtle variations and you have to decide if you like them or not.
I spoke to my son’s friend who is unhappy at Clemson. This is one person’s experience and viewpoint.
He said he wanted to go there because he felt like the only student with fiscally conservative views (=Romney-type Republican) in the small private school he attended with mostly liberal or progressive students and faculty, and he wanted something different. Unfortunately he finds that the student body is overwhelmingly hard right conservative, and the kids he knows, including those from OOS, are all in for Trump. Although he has made some friends, he finds the school very homogenous overall and didn’t realize how much he appreciated diversity, and how important it is to him. He will finish out the year and then transfer out.
I did a quick look and as a public school Clemson does a poor job of representing its state’s large African American population.