Am I wrong or is there a trend toward self-consciously rural, white identity types affecting a broad southern accent regardless of where they’re actually from? Like it’s become an identity thing instead of a regional one.

This is a little difficult for me to reconcile. Dialect is the best way to determine an ethnicity, and Southern culture is more than the stereotypes (although they indeed often apply). I have only ever lived in the Southern US, and there are cultural factors here which don’t exist elsewhere. Our cultural heritage is significantly more based in West African tradition than for example the Northeast or the Midwest and the specific mix of influences we have here is different than anywhere else. Even though this is the case, there is also a very real association among white southerners to the Confederacy, and this African influenced dialect of white American English is associated with antebellum white supremacy among southern whites which certainly caused me to avoid speaking like that when I was growing up. I really wish the development would have been in the direction of embracing our entire cultural heritage with pride rather than abandon everything about it to assimilate to a generic white American culture. It’s kind of an improvement, but the improvement could have been keeping the best aspects of what we have here. Reparations and reconciliation could have been a thousand times better, but white supremacy is what it is so here we are.

Y’all itself seems to be spreading, though.

It makes me kind of sad to see so many people happy that the accent is going away. It’s good to have diversity, and the thought of my “native” accent becoming extinct makes me sad. I don’t want bad people to have a claim to an entire accent and culture, especially since the death of the accent won’t do anything about the bad takes. There’s a lot that good about southern culture - taking things slow, being laid-back in a world that wants you to run around like a chicken with your head cut off, and forming tight communities with the people around you. I just wish there was a way to reclaim that without feeling afraid that people would assume I support the bad parts, too.

Great, now do it with all of the confederacy crap

My own two cents, I spent a good chunk of my childhood in the middle of nowhere Georgia, and have actively suppressed Southern-isms in my vernacular. I associate it with a time in my life where I was at the whims of people whom had neither my best interests or even their own at heart; trapped within a culture that promoted ignorance and blind fanatical devotion to evangelical hucksters. I can appreciate that this experience may not ring true for everyone from the south, and that there are plenty of southerners that don’t conform to outdated values.

Nonetheless, I can’t say I’ll be sad to see it go.