Brit Reacts to 53 Maps That Perfectly Explaining The American South

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Yo, what's up guys? Welcome back to another video. This is a reaction to 53 maps that explain the South. I feel like this video is a bit of me, if I say so myself. I mean, I've done a lot of map um sort of reaction videos in the past.

[00:00:12]And this is one solely focusing on the South. So, I think it could be pretty fun to do. Um I don't really know what to expect. I've never watched this guy's channel before, but I'm here for it. Hopefully you're going to enjoy.

[00:00:23]And let's jump into this reaction and see, and I guess learn more about the South throughout this video.

[00:00:29]>> It targets 2004, just after Hurricane Charley.

[00:00:32]Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Craig Fugate was trying to figure out a way to measure just how bad the damage was.

[00:00:39]>> This will be something unlike we have ever seen.

[00:00:41]>> something incredibly robust and incredibly reliable across the region.

[00:00:46]>> Waffle House prides itself in quickly getting back up and running after storms, >> [music] >> and FEMA has taken notice.

[00:00:52]>> Everywhere a Waffle House was closed, things were bad. Limited menu, things were getting bad. Full menu, well, maybe everybody was going to be okay. The Waffle House Index is just one of the maps that I'm going to show you today, because we're going to use maps to explain the Southern United States. A region that is complicated and misunderstood, and one that I am actually from. I will show you my very Southern childhood accent later in this video. I'm going to eliminate one state from the South after each category, and I'm also going to choose one map that best defines the South.

[00:01:31]Waffle House is well-known for breakfast food and the occasional late night >> the South in general of America is just a hot spot for food. America's great for food in general, but the South is just a different level.

[00:01:44]>> fight as well. Look at the sheer density of Waffle Houses here, and look how they really are so Southern. Look at Waffle House at the county level, you can see the density, and you can see that it is really clustered here in Georgia.

[00:01:57]Gwinnett, Georgia has 40 Waffle Houses. Red is going to mean low on all our maps, and blue will typically mean higher.

[00:02:05]When I go to southern view like this, it means that the rankings are calculated for the south alone. You've got Bojangles, which is also southern, clustered in the southeastern section.

[00:02:16]You can see that they are actually kind of a North Carolina thing. If you don't know, Krystal is the weird southern White Castle. You can see that they don't escape the south at all. It also shows up more in the [music] lower south.

[00:02:30]>> interesting though how like they still like even though they're like in the south, it's still specific areas within the south where they're way more popular.

[00:02:37]>> Any southerner is going to tell you that Piggly Wiggly is also a chain >> Why is Why is it so big in the south and then just massive in Illinois?

[00:02:47]That's really interesting.

[00:02:49]Is that Is that that That is Illinois, isn't it? Is that Minnesota?

[00:02:56]Um I don't actually know. I think maybe that's Minnesota.

[00:02:59]Is that Minnesota? Oh, [ __ ] Chicago's around here, isn't it? No, this is Illinois. I'm certain.

[00:03:05]I've got to put myself right.

[00:03:07]It's Illinois, 100%.

[00:03:10]I think.

[00:03:13]Oh, god.

[00:03:15]I spelled it wrong as well.

[00:03:17]Oh, what? It wasn't That was Wisconsin.

[00:03:19]It's not even Oh my god.

[00:03:22]I thought I was cooking.

[00:03:26]I knew Illinois was around that region.

[00:03:29]Why is it so big in Wisconsin then?

[00:03:33]What What a random like just It's massive here and then just massive here.

[00:03:36]>> Wiggly is also a chain of great importance, but you can see Wisconsin's actually number two. We also have Cook Out, another >> He literally said it, so I could have just left it.

[00:03:46]>> chain that if you hadn't been to the south, you wouldn't have heard of it.

[00:03:49]This is a map of hog and pig production by state and all the southeastern barbecue proclivities might make you think that they lean towards pork and towards pig because they make a lot of it there. But if you look at the map here, you can see that hog and pig production is actually not that localized in the south. [music] I made a whole video that is just about mapsplaining barbecue. If you haven't seen that, you should check it out. I stole this idea from Reddit and recreated it. These are seasonal searches, you know, between Halloween and Christmas for pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and apple pie. Pecan pie is only popular in these areas of the south.

[00:04:30]Let's go ahead and see where sweet tea is searched. There is a southern concentration and just so that I can end this section with a bit of a bummer, yes, you do see a somewhat higher rate of diabetes with That's a mild contrast.

[00:04:45]How much higher it is in the south? I mean, look, when you've got all those food options, it makes sense, but >> Damn. Which often correlates >> with obesity in the southern United States, though not exclusively. Waffle House has to be our top map for that section. So, that's the one that's going to go on in our tournament of maps that define the south. I don't want to make this cut, but I think we're going to eliminate Texas.

[00:05:07]Texas is no longer part of the south.

[00:05:11]United States Postal Service actually divides it a little bit differently.

[00:05:15]They have an Atlantic region that includes Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. And then a southern region that does stretch out to include Texas, Florida, and Arkansas, and Oklahoma. I want to show you the Forest Service regions. This one is necessarily going to be tied a little more to the actual geography of the south. So, this is how the CDC breaks up the geographic regions, and I like this map because it perfectly matches uh the map >> Oklahoma being considered part of the south is really interesting.

[00:05:45]>> that I'm using throughout this video.

[00:05:47]except Missouri is in that West North Central area. So, I'm going to pick this for my top map, the CDC map. We're going to cut Missouri. Missouri, you are no longer Southern.

[00:05:58]>> Time.

[00:05:59]>> Now that we've gotten into it, we can start to get a little more serious. This is a map of Southern governors, and you can see that right here you're getting some political polarization as the South, red, stands for Republican, and the blue stands for Democratic. Virginia recently turned blue, got North Carolina and Kentucky blue. Any political map has to include the US presidential map of 2024. This is what it looks like when you look at the map by county. To me, this is an argument for a rural-urban divide because you can see that in urban areas of the South, they still tilted pretty blue. This is a map of right-to-work >> It's so interesting how it's so split between like rural areas and major cities and stuff.

[00:06:42]How it is just so divided so split in terms of who people vote for.

[00:06:47]>> right-to-work states. So, that basically means states where you don't have to join a union if you're trying to get a job. And you can see that here you really do have a Southern wall. What This is a map of states where school starts before 8:00 a.m. This is a mashup >> Before 8:00 a.m.?

[00:07:06]Oh my god, I mean, fair enough. I'm thinking about that.

[00:07:09]That's probably a good idea realistically cuz then it just sort of gets you out of school earlier, too. But as a student, that would not be fun.

[00:07:16]>> of values, but also weather and heat.

[00:07:19][music] In the South, the most disproportionately represented white ethnic group that you're going to see is [music] Scotch-Irish.

[00:07:26]Um and that you can see right here. It's clustered here in all the former colonies. Number one state is going to be North Carolina. But there are also interesting [music] surprises.

[00:07:38]This is a map that I found that Joseph Hanna made. It shows ethnic Vietnamese in the United States by county. And you can see that most ethnic Vietnamese are in California, but there are pockets in the very southern Gulf areas of the South. And people speculate that that is because some of the agriculture and climate is similar, and that's why people chose to migrate to those areas in some cases. This map of Gullah Geechee heritage is interesting [music] because it's clustered along the coast, black Americans of a specific ethnic group that developed their own culture, in some cases spoke their own language.

[00:08:14]Now, Gullah Geechee are black Americans.

[00:08:16]I'm going to have more about that in uh some of the other sections of this video. Oh my gosh, we have to make another cut. I have to say that honestly Virginia is is standing out to me just because of the influence of Washington, D.C.

[00:08:30]We look on the map of governors there, you also get it not being that southern.

[00:08:35]I'm going to cut Virginia from the South.

[00:08:38]I will be in trouble for this.

[00:08:41]>> I just realized Maryland is being considered part of the South in this video. I guess geographically that is what it is, but I'm I'm thinking more culturally, right?

[00:08:50]>> Okay, if you want to hear my southern accent, I'm about to play it for you. Uh and that's thanks to the sponsor of this video, >> [music] >> which is Monarch.

[00:08:57]>> Get your money bag, get your money, baby.

[00:09:00]>> And slide.

[00:09:05]Let's recover from that with some alligators.

[00:09:09]>> Gators?

[00:09:10]>> The USGS has a good map of alligator zones and alligator appearances, and you can see that they are really clustered in the lower U.S., creating an alligator belt. Uh but not like made of alligator.

[00:09:23]Metaphorical alligator belt, that's what I mean.

[00:09:26]>> You have to be blown away by the power of kudzu.

[00:09:29]Power of the kud.

[00:09:30]>> This ivy-like plant is very invasive, and it's gone all over the South. And there are other oddities that aren't South wide, but they're just terrifying, like the Burmese python. The agriculture of the South is also affected by the red clay soil that is so common there. I'm looking so Southern here, Oklahoma.

[00:09:50]Despite that red clay, which looks so infertile, uh the South is actually pretty good when it comes to tree diversity. The forest coverage map of the South is interesting, less as an agricultural thing and maybe more as a political one.

[00:10:05]This one that's provided by the US Forest Service shows that the South is is covered in forest, right? This dark green that's over in the western area indicates federal ownership of these forests, whereas the colors that you'll see in the South over here, those indicate private ownership. I think most of that comes from the fact that the South is just a really, really old region of the country. A lot of people also think of Spanish moss when it comes to the South. You can see the coverage there is kind of similar to the alligator map. So, cotton is not quite the only the South thing that you might expect it to be. Got a fair amount of cotton here in Texas, uh and even in California. I want to show you one more map in this section, which is FEMA's National Risk Index. A lot of these emergency risky areas are out west, and that's because of wildfires. But, you do also have sections in Florida because of hurricanes. We've got to go with kudzu.

[00:11:00]That is such a Southern thing. We've already cut Texas, but I don't think we've cut Oklahoma yet, but I still can't believe I cut Virginia. Why didn't I not just cut Maryland?

[00:11:10]>> I Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I feel like we're not getting like the deep South, right? I mean, Florida's still there, which I don't think is part of the deep South. Obviously, Maryland. If there's one more state there, maybe maybe that shouldn't be part of it. But, then I think Missouri is part of the deep South, right? I think.

[00:11:24]Could be wrong, but >> Honestly, I didn't see it. It's so small and dinky compared to Virginia.

[00:11:30]Now, we are finally getting into history. I want to start it on a bit of a lighter note, which is death.

[00:11:36]And you can see that the South's age really, really affects how many graveyards there are, because a lot of these were small, little graveyards. So, as William Faulkner once said, "The past, it's never even past, bro." This basically said that Missouri could become part of the Union if as long as Maine could be a free state. And I think it's incredible how, you know, 200 years later. This is from 1820. 200 years later, this map is still so descriptive of the South as a cultural region, even if the political implications of this map, the legality of slavery, are gone.

[00:12:15]This War Department map of 1861 kind of shows you where the lines were drawn.

[00:12:20]And of course, this war that was waged over slavery and the future of slavery had legacies that extended well beyond it. This is by Ida B. Wells. This is the Red Record of Lynching Map. And and you can see here it's it's disproportionately clustered in the South, though not universally in the South. I would also be remiss if I didn't show you this W.E.B. Du Bois map of distribution of black Americans in the United States.

[00:12:47]These were the states that were segregated prior to Brown versus the Board of Education. Naturally, African Americans responded to this via the Great Migration. But of course, as you may know, the demography is is changing and evolving. This is a county-by-county map of people who have reported their race as being black alone. That's largely a southern thing where it's happening. I mean, you you get clusters [music] of this in urban areas in Midwest. Um the same in New York. But when you rank and look at the proportion of people who report black alone as their race, um there are significantly more who do so in the South. And that's worth noting. I think I think also clear when you look at the statewide map. Now, compare this to a map of people reporting white alone as their race, and you can see that it's significantly more common in the northern areas of the United States. Number one state for that is actually West Virginia, which is an interesting argument to cut it. This dynamic that I'm talking about is clear when you look at people reporting two or more races. That's more common out on the west, less common here in the East Coast. It also does necessarily extend to some of the ownership in these areas of the country. [music] So, this is going to be disproportionately affected by the fact that there are just more non-white people in these areas of the country, but there are also more non-white homeowners in these [music] areas of the country. And I think this is particularly important when you look back on issues like redlining, which was the prejudicial granting of federal loans, because remember these were at a federal level. So, look at this redlining map, and you'll see that, you know, all over the United States, redlining existed. It's also important to the story of the South to note where the Indian federal lands are. And today, you really have to zoom in to see federal lands that are controlled by Indians. Whereas in the west, you know, the Navajo region is is huge. Okay, that is the end of the history section.

[00:14:46]>> Interesting one to pick out.

[00:14:47]>> map of this section has to be the Missouri Compromise. It fascinates me how it captures what is and isn't southern, and yet it's 200 years old.

[00:14:57]Again, it goes back to that William Faulkner quote.

[00:15:01]History, you're always around and doing stuff. What is up with that, man?

[00:15:08]You could argue that Kentucky and West Virginia are both a little anomalous, but I think you've got to go with West Virginia.

[00:15:17]Red is going to be low income, blue is going to be higher income. You definitely have lower income areas clustered in the South. In particular, Mississippi and Louisiana. Oh, and look at this, Maryland.

[00:15:30]You are not long for this world. You are not looking good when it comes to money.

[00:15:33]You're rich, Maryland. I want to also show manufactured homes. This is what we would think of as mobile homes, though it's actually a slightly broader class.

[00:15:41]1.8% of homes are manufactured in Maryland versus in Mississippi where it's 34.3% and I'm happy to say that I >> Maryland's a gold guy.

[00:15:50]>> I have found redemption. Maryland, you are rich.

[00:15:54]Get out of my house. You are not part of the South anymore.

[00:16:00]I considered leading off >> [music] >> the entire video uh with this map. This is excessive drinking [music] as defined by the CDC.

[00:16:09]>> Damn, me and me and the South now have more in common. Respect. There's a bit of mutual respect between us. It is mad that how like the the drinking is so much I'm going to assume red means more drinking, right?

[00:16:24]I think it would be. I'm not trying to think. Yeah, I think that would be like it would be more drinking in the red regions.

[00:16:30]>> You can see right here, Wisconsin is all blue. Texas is anomalous, but the rest of the South here, right where the Bible Belt is, you have a [clears throat] lot of red, which means that there's not a lot of excessive drinking.

[00:16:42]>> Okay, I knew it was going to be the opposite. I knew it. And I thought maybe it'd be down to like religion and sort of culture and differences like that, but I just thought cuz I saw heavy drinking um is a bad thing and red sort of you sort of see that the color red and it's sort of danger or bad, but no, it's the opposite.

[00:17:02]That's a confusing map. I'm blaming the map for that.

[00:17:04]>> So, since we're talking about hard drinks, let's talk about soft drinks, too. This is a map from Pop versus Soda.

[00:17:11]If you saw my video in which I mapsplained the Midwest, uh you know where pop is popular. This is where people say drink a Coke. Uh, the number one state where you drink a Coke rather than saying a soft drink, soda, or pop is Louisiana. Yeah, in Vermont, [clears throat] nobody's saying drink a Coke. Bernie Sanders is not drinking a Coke. I'd like a soda, please. This would be malpractice if I didn't show you some linguistic maps. Like in my Midwestern video, these maps were made by Joshua Katz.

[00:17:40]This is a map of y'all regions, but not not in Florida.

[00:17:45]>> Y'all is the most southern term, for sure.

[00:17:48]>> He's got where do you call coleslaw slaw, and then the second vowel in pajamas. This is my favorite one.

[00:17:54]Apparently, in the red, you say the A as in father, which I just did. I just proved I'm southern. Pajamas father, I'm wearing my pajamas father.

[00:18:02]>> Pajamas, that's like British.

[00:18:06]I mean, we've got a bit of there's some similarities, like cuz I feel like Americans usually say pajamas, pajamas.

[00:18:13]I can't imagine people from the south saying pajamas.

[00:18:16]>> Country is not a southern thing. Country is a rural thing and increasingly an everybody's thing, much to the chagrin of people with ears. This [music] is religious adherence, uh, normalized by population by county. And you can see that there is more blue in the south here. When you look at the state-by-state map, it becomes a little clearer that it's a southern thing.

[00:18:36]You've got this southern wall here. When you look at the rankings, yeah, Utah's number one. An interesting twist on this is if you look at religious congregations normalized by population, uh, you see a map that at first blush looks similar. Then when you look at the state rankings, you start to wonder, okay, why is Texas like this? When you look at a map of megachurches by state, Texas and Florida are super dense when it comes to megachurches. So, if you have 10,000 people going to a megachurch, that is a lot fewer churches, but just as many religious adherents. A megachurch is defined as 2,000 people or more. The only other map that I want to get to is the map of the SEC. [music] This is not because I want to put it there, but because people like sports.

[00:19:21]Um we are done with our final section.

[00:19:24]To me you've got to go with religious congregations >> [music] >> normalized by population. In Florida, the axe is finally coming down. You are out of the south.

[00:19:35]>> I feel like he has basically just made the deep south from this um from this video, which I think is pretty um pretty cool and I guess that he's basically like it makes sense because the deep south is like just in terms of culture. Like that is like when you like I don't know.

[00:19:52]They are like the sort of the the most southern possible. Whereas a lot of these other states may have sort of parts or history historical sort of links to it, but in terms of like the full sort of southern experience are probably not the same.

[00:20:05]Um So yeah, that was pretty perfect for the video to be fair.

[00:20:08]>> is the top map. The person in me who loves the south really wants to pick Waffle House. But I have to say that that map of the Missouri Compromise really struck me. In 2026, a map from 1820 can still do some serious work in defining a cultural region that we call the Southern United States.

[00:20:33]It explains a lot of the things that would confound outsiders.

[00:20:38]So Faulkner, I agree. You're right. Past ain't past, it's still passing on the past.

[00:20:45]But there might be something new [music] going on too.

[00:20:51]All right, that's it for this one. Let me >> That was a really well put together video. I like this guy's channel a lot.

[00:20:56]Um links will be in the description to this video of course cuz this guy always has a like has a very big interest in maps and I think a lot of you guys do too.

[00:21:05]Um but yeah, there's an old joke about Florida. the more north you go, the further south you get.

[00:21:10]As a Balti- Baltimon- Wait, Baltimo- I can't Why can't I say that?

[00:21:16]Baltimorian. Calling Virginia before Maryland is absolutely diabolical. Being from North Carolina, I refute that pecan pie map. That The ones that don't search it don't need to because they already know how to make it with family recipe.

[00:21:29]Fair enough. Came from the map for the map nerdery. Stayed for the Maryland slander.

[00:21:37]A map of historical historically black universities might have been useful.

[00:21:41]Also, Texans are yelling, "Come and get it."

[00:21:44]Watching um I Why can't I read today?

[00:21:47]Watch this video constantly knowing my house. My home state of Mississippi had no chance of being in contention.

[00:21:53]Um, there's a neighborhoods in West Virginia called Bigley that has the Bigley Pi- the Bigley Piggly Wiggly. I love that.

[00:22:04]In college, I took a course on literature of the American South. We determined the border stops at Orlando, Oklahoma, and Texas are western. Sweet tea was definitely a factor.

[00:22:15]Uh, I enjoyed this though. It's really uh eye-opening, fascinating video, but yeah, let me know your thoughts and until next time, let's subscribe. Peace.