American coffee

When I travel from New York to Florida, there is always a time when I have to readjust. Often times this moment comes when I walk into a restaurant and order coffee.

In Miami or Fort Lauderdale, they usually ask me if I want “American coffee.” This distinguishes the relatively thin things that we dilute further with milk, cream, or sugar from the strong Cuban-style espresso that the person taking my order probably grew up drinking. In New York, coffee is just coffee. If I want an espresso drink, I have to make a point to order it.

This is not surprising if you look at a map developed by Colin Woodard, a reporter for the Portland (Maine) Press Herald. On Woodard’s map, the southern third of Florida is not part of America at all, but “part of the Spanish Caribbean.” (1)

This is, of course, an oversimplification. On the other hand, any attempt to classify the United States along rigid geographic boundaries will be equally oversimplified.

We are a very complex country and what surprises me is not so much what makes us different, but what unites us through those differences. We live under the same Constitution. We accept, albeit often reluctantly, the rulings of a single Supreme Court. We watch the same sports and many of the same television shows, and despite our differences, we choose to receive our news primarily from a small number of outlets that tend to approach the world from one of a relatively small number of vantage points.

I can assure you that the cities of Florida, Naples and Marco Island, are not part of the Spanish Caribbean, although it may be a different story a few miles away, where the housekeepers and gardeners who serve the gated communities of those live. cities. Further north, in the city of Kissimmee, “Deep South”, you can find a large Puerto Rican population that has almost nothing in common with the population of Ocala, another city in the Deep South, just 90 miles northwest.

In California, Los Angeles County residents of Little Saigon are likely to be surprised to learn that they are part of “The North.” Politically, Los Angeles seems to have more in common with Seattle than with El Paso, despite Woodard’s map.

Indianapolis residents have more cultural sympathies with Minneapolis or Milwaukee than with the Greater Appalachian communities that can be reached by driving a few dozen miles beyond the limits of the metropolitan area. College towns like Missoula, Mont., And Charlottesville, Va., Are often political and cultural islands in the midst of Woodard’s “nations.”

It’s actually hard for me to see how the older generation Italian enclaves on New York City’s Staten Island or Bay Ridge are necessarily more welcoming to outsiders (a defining feature of “New Netherland”) than the southern populations of Florida, or Los Angeles or Houston, all of which have absorbed large waves of immigrants. Not to mention places like Hawaii and Puerto Rico, which don’t appear at all on Woodard’s map of the United States.

The fact that we are a multilingual society is also more complicated than relegating Spanish speakers to the bottom third of Florida and “El Norte.” The search for “Manifest Destiny” made us multilingual a long time ago, as we acquired large tracts of areas previously ruled by Spanish. When we come to deal with our Spanish national heritage, our views on immigration will be easier to resolve. Meanwhile, it makes sense to accept the fact that Spanish influence is not geographically restricted to one or two areas of the United States.

However, I have nothing against Woodard’s overall conclusion, which is that we have significant differences in culture and perspective across our country. Sometimes, however, these differences refer more to what is acceptable to say in a given region than to a consensus of thought. In Westchester County, NY, north of New York City, you stand out if you admit to having a firearm in your home. In Cherokee County, Georgia, north of Atlanta, you stand out if you admit not having one.

Woodard’s original point was that the differences between American regions are deep-seated and long-standing, and that understanding them is essential when it comes to assessing the national debate on issues like gun control. Regional differences contribute to these debates at least as much as political ideology. A quick internet search will turn up maps of the US divided by dialect, personality, economic growth potential, and community type, to name just a few. Woodard himself cites several previous attempts at a regional understanding of the country.

What is remarkable to me is how freely we allow “immigration” and “naturalization” through the cultural nations that Woodard describes. When I was 16 and from the Bronx, I was able to move to Montana and they accepted me easily there. I made friends across the 500-mile-wide state, and those friends still recognize me at restaurants when I meet them 35 years later. In Palm Coast, Florida, it seems like everyone you meet comes from New York or New Jersey, while the other half of the population may never have ventured further north than Georgia. Everyone still gets along.

America has always been a place where you can pack, move, and invent anew. Our birthplaces are not our destiny. We define our homes, not the other way around. Some of us work to shape the places where we live in better expressions of our values. Some move to places that better reflect their personal arrangements. Others live comfortably in many regions throughout their lives or, like me, divide their time between regions.

I like to be asked if I want “American coffee.” It reminds me that I have a choice. In reality, however, all of those options are “American” coffee. Like coffee, America comes in many flavors.

Fountain:

1) Tufts Magazine, “Up in Arms”