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APPENDIX 4
NOTE ON THE MEANING OF REGIONAL TERMS AS
USED IN THIS BOOK
The word America is used as a synonym for continental United States.
The word ^outh is not used consistently throughout the whole book, since various
Investigators upon whose work we have drawn have had variant definitions. In each
case we have tried to make the definition cleir by context or footnotes. In a sense the
geographical boundaries of the South are “ideal-typical,*^ and it is in this sense that
we shall speak of the South when we are not using statistics. Some have stressed that
there are many Souths, but in the Negro problem there are also reasons for speaking about
one South.
... if it can be said there are many Souths, the fact remains that there is also one South.
That is to say, it is easy to trace throughout the region (roughly delimited by the
boundaries of the former Confederate States of America, but shading over into some of
the border states, notably Kentucky, also) a fairly definite mental pattern, associated
with a fairly definite social pattern—^a complex of established relationships and habits of
thought, sentiments, prejudices, standards and values, and associations of ideas, which,
if it is not common strictly to every group of white people in the South, is still common
in one appreciable measure or another, and in some part or another, to all but relatively
negligible ones.*
The roughness of these Ideal-typical boundaries for the South is suggested when we
examine various criteria for defining the South, as in Table i. When we use statistics,
we refer either to the census definition of the South (i6 states and the District of
Columbia) or to the school-segregation-law definition (17 states and the District of
Columbia). These definitions differ solely by the inclusion of Missouri in the latter.
Sometimes statistics for all these states are not available, and we are forced to use an
artificially abbreviated definition but without pretense that this includes all of the
South.
The North is a residual term, comprising all states not in the South: it thus includes
ail Western states in the historical period being discussed. Sometimes, in order to call
special attention to the Western states, we speak of the “North and West.** When we wish
to restrict our discussion to the northeastern quadrant of the country, we speak of “the
Northern states east of the Mississippi River.”
Many authors have defined different regions within the South. When we cite them
we use their definitions. When we use regional terms on our own authority, we follow
these definitions unless necessity forces us to specify other definitions: Lower Souths or
* W. F. Cash, The Mind of the South (1941), p. viii»
1071
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