Why I Have No Animosity Toward Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota (And Don't Regard Them as Part of 'Midwest Culture')
A Surprising Resignation from a Contributor Prompts A Deeper Explanation of a Strange Place in America
I knew that I’d be ruffling some Hoosier feathers with yesterday’s essay detailing how an adolescence experiencing emotional abuse, bullying, and violence from my classmates in Carmel, Indiana, as well as other cultural experiences, left me with a deep distaste for the state of my birth.
What I did not anticipate, though, is that a friend in another state would take such offense, apparently taking my broadside against “Midwest culture” as a personal attack on them necessitating their withdraw from contributing in the future to God of the Desert Books. The first comment was from a writer I’ve published and encouraged for years - even making her an editor at Liberty Island and offering her the chance to continue as an editor here - who I regarded as a friend and kind soul:
Sally and I both responded clarifying the misunderstanding:
I suppose a further explanation is in order. Because if one simply googles “Midwest,” reads Wikipedia, or goes by Federal Census guidelines then Michigan certainly qualifies as part of the region:
In my experience with the states in this region, both visiting them and observing them politically and culturally over the years, there are major cultural differences between the trios of Minnesota-Wisconsin-Michigan and Illinois-Indiana-Ohio. I think these differences can be attributed to two factors: geography and immigration history.
First, being just a few hours further north and more heavily influenced by the Great Lakes, causes these states to be much colder and snowier. This alone very much shapes the overall cultures of the states and influenced who settled there in the past and who chooses to live there now. The kinds of people who choose to live in snowy climates are just inherently different from people who want to live in the Arizona desert, the Colorado mountains, East Coast urban centers, or the swamps of Florida.
Second, historically, partly influenced by geography and climate, very different cultural groups settled these states. Here’s another map, from one of my favorite books on our country’s cultural histories, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodson:
Everyone see how this works? Ohio, Indiana and Illinois are each hybrid states culturally. They represent a blend of the cultures of “The Midlands” and “Greater Appalachia” whereas Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are expressions of “Yankeedom.” The people who historically were fine living in the cold of New England were happy to live in the same cold further west.
How do these three rival regional cultures differ? This Business Insider article summarizes the themes of Woodson’s book pretty well. Here’s how it describes these three:
Yankeedom:
Yankeedom values education, intellectual achievement, communal empowerment, and citizen participation in government as a shield against tyranny. Yankees are comfortable with government regulation. Woodard notes that Yankees have a "Utopian streak." The area was settled by radical Calvinists.
Midlands:
Settled by English Quakers, The Midlands are a welcoming middle-class society that spawned the culture of the "American Heartland." Political opinion is moderate, and government regulation is frowned upon. Woodard calls the ethnically diverse Midlands "America's great swing region." Within the Midlands are parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska.
Greater Appalachia:
Colonized by settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of Northern Ireland, northern England, and the Scottish lowlands, Greater Appalachia is stereotyped as the land of hillbillies and rednecks. Woodard says Appalachia values personal sovereignty and individual liberty and is "intensely suspicious of lowland aristocrats and Yankee social engineers alike." It sides with the Deep South to counter the influence of federal government.
So the root problem of the Midwest I grew up in can be found in the way that Greater Appalachia culture blended with Midlands culture. We sort of got the worst of both worlds in Indiana. From the Appalachia side we have the individualistic, aggressive warrior tendency. From the Midlands side we have the “moderate,” polite, don’t-rock-the-boat, conformist tendency.
So what this means in practice is that Indiana and this Midwest region value the tough, “real man” who can succeed in sports and other contests flaunting his supposed masculinity. But if you’re in any way harmed by the excesses of this narcissistic macho temperament, you’re just supposed to shut up about it rather than be loud and demand justice.
One of my friends in Indiana who graduated in the same class as me, told me about his frustrations with the bullies terrorizing his daughter at school today. The school police officer apparently told him that the solution was to simply “avoid the kids causing them issues” — as though that were at all possible — and to “brave themselves to deal with it.” That mirrors what I’ve heard from other old classmates. Bullies were not stopped and abuse situations were swept under the rug so as not to publicly embarrass the school.
Well, I’m done being intimidated and pushed into silence by Hoosiers and other Midwesterners who don’t want to acknowledge any of the cultural problems in their part of the country. I’m going to continue speaking the truth about what I experienced and what so many still living here have to put up with every day.
Sorry to see you go, Audie. I really thought we were friends and you cared about me more than you’ve shown you truly do. But yes, this part of the country truly is a bigoted place filled with bigoted people. Here’s the dictionary definition of the word: “blindly devoted to some creed, opinion, or practice.” Most Midwesterners are so blindly devoted to the culture and practices of their home they can’t even bear to understand why others might be so hurt and horrified by it.