July 31, 2006
States I Refuse to Acknowledge as Midwestern - A primer for the haters. Responses in the letters section.
After the 10th mention of Chicago, I knew that there was a 95.893% chance that Missouri would be considered non-Midwestern. The author did not let me down.
Parts of Missouri that are southern:
The Ozarks
the little bootheel thing where cotton grows
Parts of Missouri where jackasses say Missourah:
the ozarks
Ugh, I get really damn sick of Chicago people and their damn provincialism. I would go to Milwaukee or Minneapolis as a paragon of a midwestern city long before Chicago and it's obnoxious condescending east coast-lite attitude.
For me, the Midwest is Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ohio and Missouri if they want to get in (luloutoo would argue with me; if I remember she wants Ohio to be East Coast). I thought the article hit it on the head. The states in the south are in the South and I'd argue that there should be a designation called "Plains" or "Great Plains" states for those just west of the Midwest and something along the lines of "Rocky Mountain" states for those still west of that.
And I think Pennsylvania just squeaks into Yankee (I don't like it but I can see it) but Virginia clearly does not.
What always got me is that when you look at a map of the US, the "midwestern" states look to be neither particularly mid nor west. But then it's "midwest" of the whole conteninent. Right. Continent.
Actually, corn is second to milk in Michigan. [pdf] I thought corn would be further down on that top 20 list, and that wheat and fruits would total much more. Learn something every day, eh? But what about reconciling images of Detroit (likely destorted by 1967 racial strife, 1980s murder capital, and "RoboCop", which was filmed in Houston anyway) with non-corn images of mines.
I think that PA is very Yankee, but I was in awe of the guard who thought that VA, the state that contained the capital of the Confederacy, wasn't "south".
Regarding Michigan: Detroit to me is the epitome of an industrial city. I always associated midwestern with agriculture and therefore corn. or wheat. I wasn't busting on Detroit for being sh***y, I was just saying the mental image of farms wasn't there. I haven't seen too much of Michigan, but I didn't see tons of farmland. I got the impression that the money generated from making cars or chemicals dominated the money generated from farming in MI. And anyway, I'm from Philly, I have no room to talk about cities being crappy. (Some of Philly is crappy, but I love it anyway.) Sorry I wasn't clearer about what I meant about Detroit - no disrespect intended.
That's right natedogg, Ohio is NOT midwestern. According to me, someone who lived there for quite awhile. I mean yeah, we had some farming, but have you ever been to Indiana? That place is definitely midwestern! You see nothing but corn! Of course this means I'm not sure what group we fit in.... Cleveland is sort of like Detroit and Pittsburgh in that it used to be a big industrial city which dominated my perception of the area. I would also not consider Michigan midwestern.
Howard the Duck is from Cleveland.
I had a discussion about this topic a few years back... not about the Midwest, but about what states belong and do not belong to New England.
Which ones were excluded? My conception is that New England = MA, NH, VT RI and ME, with possibly CT included (all the heavy NYC influence)
Those are it. I was not aware that PE and NY were NOT part of New England. Andrew (from NJ) informed of this matter when I was in NY.
Yep, CT is in; PA, NY, and NJ are out. FWIW, New Englanders are very picky about this (at least the ones i met when i lived there are) and seem to be more aware of the "Mid-Atlantic" designation than are those of us who live there.
My Cleveland friends split on Ohio. On the one hand, it's in the eastern time zone; on the other, they all say "pop." Personally, I consider the latter grounds for Midwesternism, especially when you consider the typical blandness of food (salt & pepper as only known spices). [And before anyone calls east coast snobbery here, one side of my family is from Southern Illinois, which is midwest to the core, except with the bonus Southern Baptist streak coursing through it -- sweet -- so I tease with love. And chili pepper.]
However, I don't think either of these regionalisms are as touchy as the South. When I worked for a college textbook publisher, the sales reps were very insistent (and of course, split) on which states we could include in readers on "the South" versus "the West". Texas wanted its own reader (natch), while Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, if i recall correctly, were the most contentious.
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So, Nate, Wisco-boy, do you feel as adamantly about this as the author does?
Being a decidedly non-midwesterner Pennsylvanian, and therefore not an expert, here are states that I always thought were midwestern: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, South Dakota and Oklahoma.
I never considered Michigan midwestern because I couldn't ever resolve the image of cornfields and Detroit.
This article also reminds me of the "yankee" problem. I went to South Carolina when I had PA driver's license and VA tags. Guards at the nuclear facility called me "yankee" because of the plates, even before they saw my ID. What people consider the South is apparently up for interpretation, too.
posted by NanoCindy at 04:34PM CST on July 31