What counts as a Yankee

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I posted this in another thread but it depends on who you ask.

A Non-American: Any American

A Southerner: Anyone from the North, usually with an expletive attached.

Kevin Phillips: An American of English descent, whose ancestors first settled in New England before spreading out across the Northern states in the early to mid 19th century. Typically of a Congressionalist or low church protestant denomination.

Rather anti-Catholic, prone to nativism and cultural imperialism, but also tended to favor equality (at least before the law if not generally) and thus their opposition to slavery. There is a tendency towards labeling the whole group as "proto-marxists", which is an over generalization at best. The vast majority were very much on board with capitalism, especially the pro-business nationalism of the Federalist, Whig and GOP Republican Parties. They also defined the American middle class with their values (mainly because they had one of the highest concentrations of middle class wealth at the time and the Northern industrial states were the only region that could support a large middle class at the time.

Most white northerners have mixed ancestry and the tendency of people of mixed German descent to opt for identifying as German-American, and likewise for those of Irish descent, means that "Yankees" as defined by Phillips, have largely been squeezed out demographically and barely exist as a distinct population.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Outside of rural New England and Utah (mostly Mormons - who originated in Upstate NY and are their own thing really), there are few people of wholly English ancestry anymore.  They're not really a distinctive group anymore.  I don't know if anyone - except older WASP New Englanders maybe - would identify as a Yankee today.

I don't even really think people would have identified themselves as "being Yankee" within the confines of the group as defined by Phillips. It was always more of a name given to them first by their enemies or later by various historians/demographers/political science authors, which Phillips is arguably all three.

I made the comparison on discord a while back, that the Mormons are the closest equivalent to what the Yankee North was like, just trading out the specifics of the Mormon faith for say Congregationalist or Baptists or what have you. The high value placed on education, personal responsibility, self improvement, and until very recently, a good deal of political moralism as well (CA 2008 comes to mind).