31 ms·

On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

140 points by samclemens 9y ago

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mark_l_watson 9y ago
Nice read! My wife and I just moved to Urbana/Champaign Illinois 4 months ago for my new job, and the Midwest really is different (from Arizona and California where we lived before). People are really nice, food is great, very inexpensive place to live, and there is real natural beauty here if you look for it. Anyways, we are delighted with this area.
- pure_ambition 9y ago
  Check out Allerton Park if you haven't already! The trails are amazing.
  - cableshaft 9y ago
    A friend got married there. It's a really pretty place. Has a giant mansion on the premises too that he used for the reception.
- pm90 9y ago
  Former UIUC student... just wait till it starts snowing ;). But in all seriousness: the town(s) do have their charm. And if you're bored, its only a hour drive to Chicago. The affordability was actually what attracted me as a student: I had a rather high standard of living for the money I was living on.
- adam 9y ago
  Congrats on the move. I grew up in Champaign. I wanted to get out of there by the time I was 18, but now I get back at least once a year and have a new appreciation for the place. Go to Papa Dels pizza if you haven't been. Get the deep dish. It will change your life.
  - fotbr 9y ago
    I've been preaching the goodness that is Papa Dels since I was out there for a conference and programming competition at UIUC in the very early 2000s. Happy to see I'm not the only one. Just be aware, a slice of the deep dish is pretty much a meal by itself.
  - chrisfinne 9y ago
    oh man, i forgot about that place. expensive for a student, so it was a rare treat!
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  > People are really nice, food is great, very inexpensive place to live, and there is real natural beauty here if you look for it. Anyways, we are delighted with this area. You probably shouldn't talk like that if you want it to stay that way... Denver is a warning, not a template. (I say this with partial sarcasm, obviously you can't fight change to some extent but being conscious of it and careful management to guide it's direction can prevent a lot of problems)
- deleted 9y ago
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- Karrot_Kream 9y ago
  Of all the things I appreciated about the Champaign-Urbana area, the food was not one of them. But do check out the downtown Urbana area, it's a great place!
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Whenever we drive nearby, the spouse and I wonder if the people from Normal are really just a bunch of freaks, and they just named the city that as a ruse. Obviously, all the "normal" people must therefore live in Bloomington.
  - neolefty 9y ago
    Normal! I grew up in Illinois too [1] and spent a few years in Oblong, population 1700. Its claim to fame was a newspaper headline, "Oblong man marries Normal woman." [1] and now live a stone's throw away in Indiana near Purdue U
ataturk 9y ago
What a bunch of self-aggrandizing drivel.
jerf 9y ago
Speaking as a Midwesterener, it was a valiant attempt to examine the Midwest without descending into contempt and cliches, but alas, it ultimately failed, and failed hard. Partial credit given for making it for a few paragraphs before descending into the usual trite analysis.
- domparise 9y ago
  Speaking also as a Midwesterner, I would disagree. I was born and raised in Michigan, and have not really left much other than to couch hop and envy the lives of my friends who've moved out to the coast. I feel that the contempt the author descends into is self-inflicted, and may representative of the culture and authors midwestern upbringing. From what I've observed, midwesterners are brutally humble, almost to a fault, probably stemming from the deeply rooted conservative values. Being midwestern, to me, is not its own identity, but rather a lack of the other negative identities of the regions. Speaking in terms of stereotypes I hear here (not trying to discredit these regions) the vibe is: I'm NOT a no-patience jerk like on the east coast, I'm NOT lazy and pretentious like on the west coast, I'm NOT shallow and two-faced like in the south, therefore, as a midwesterner my strongest identity is defined by a lack of those negative associations. Midwesterns choose not to be defined by what they are, which I see as no-nonsense and generally pretty authentic and genuine, but rather by what they are not. "We are not all of those bad things those other people in those other places are, and that's our best quality." But through my travels I've learned that not all people in those places are like that, and not all midwesterners are nice, but in general they prefer to be viewed as collective lack of bad things, rather than a collection of good things. This, plus an underlying more conservative and humble perspective, I feel gives light to the lack of regional identity that is perceived by people both inside and outside of the Midwest.
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    This is an excellent analysis. The author hints at something similar in the article: "['flyover country' is] a stereotype about other people’s stereotypes". Which I thought was also really an excellent description turn of phrase
humanrebar 9y ago
> ...humility is one of those words, like authenticity or (lately) resistance, that serves mainly to advertise the absence of the thing named... Humility is having a realistic view of your own abilities and worth while being OK with it. It's not a vacuum of self-worth or something. We have other words for that. To illustrate, it's not humble for LeBron James to say he's bad at basketball. It would be humble for him to claim his ability while internalizing his limitations, both on the court and off. So, to bring this back to Midwesterners, a Midwestern might say, "Yeah, I'm a great programmer, but it's not like I'm going to change the world through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility. Pass the green bean casserole, please."
- EADGBE 9y ago
  I've found there's a lot of us talented in the art of programming; whom don't always take it so seriously. That doesn't happen much outside of here.
- sp332 9y ago
  I think it just meant that someone who claims to be humble is probably bragging. Not that no one is humble.
  - mastax 9y ago
    Yes like the standard award acceptance speech "I feel so humbled..."
  - Veelox 9y ago
    I see humility as having a proper understanding of your own ability without arrogance. If I am at Thanksgiving dinner and my mom tries to brag that I am the best programmer in the state it is humble to correct her in saying that even though I have a great job, there are a lot of things I still cannot do.
    - sp332 9y ago
      But look at the context. "Authenticity" has been made meaningless, so any mass-produced focus-grouped consumer product can be called "authentic". And it's now the same with humble, which mean that it should describe something small, frugal, or at least not-ostentatious. But now big, splurgy things or places call themselves humble.
rayiner 9y ago
> In a 2015 essay for Slate, “The Rust-Belt Theory of Low-Cost High Culture,” reporter Alec McGillis marveled at the cheapness—and, it seems, the mere presence—of good orchestra and museum tickets in interior cities: One fact of history that’s often overlooked is that patronage has left an incredible legacy in places like Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc. For example, one of the finest collections of French Impressionism in the US is not in New York or San Francisco, but Philadelphia. The art museums in Pittsburgh are amazing, easily worth the (very affordable) trip out to see them. We tend to define these cities by the decline of their industrial economic base, but we forget their history. The age of the industrialists started in about 1860. By 1900, Cleveland, Buffalo, Cincinatti, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Pittsburgh were among the 15 largest cities in the country (the top 15 also included Philadelphia and Baltimore—two cities which have phenomenal culture compared to what you’d expect based on their present economies). Cleveland, with its famous orchestra, was one of the ten largest US cities from 1890-1970.
- m_mueller 9y ago
  Wait, is Philly considered Midwestern, not East Coast?
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    It's definitely East Coast.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    I mentioned Philly and Baltimore because although they’re on the east coast, they are port cities that suffiered along with the decline of the rust belt and never recovered. Philly is one of the poorest large cities in the US, but used to be very rich.
  - santaclaus 9y ago
    I've never heard Philly as considered Midwest. Northeast for sure [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis
  - 9y ago
throwaway15814 9y ago
Just moved out of the midwest.. I was originally from the East coast and moved back. I'll just say this, being a minority, I was shocked at how much contempt people had towards middle-easterners and black people. On numerous occasions people have said they've been "dirtying up the neighborhoods which is why they moved to another burb... they need to take better care of their lawns, etc". Out of all the companies that I've worked in the midwest, I've ever had a co-worker that was a black software engineer. People are put down in unfortunate ways. it's really fucking hard to climb up the corporate ladder than either coasts Pay is crap.. people have been clamoring that the midwest is going to be the next silicon alley. There's a reason why Chicago was the only major city to drop in population the last couple of years. There aren't that many interesting projects happening, it's not conducive to start-ups. i've had more arguments in the midwest with people that think tesla is a POS company for not following the rules. there's a lot of people averse to change.
- rayiner 9y ago
  > i've had more arguments in the midwest with people that think tesla is a POS company for not following the rules. there's a lot of people averse to change. That is, in contrast, what I love about the Midwest. The other day, I was snaking around the line barriers at the airport security, even though it was empty. At the end, there was a man and his young son waiting for me. He explained somewhat embarrassed that his son had wanted to walk under the guide ropes, which they did, but then they waited because he didn’t want to cut me in line. Being from DC, where people treat trying to merge as a personal insult, that made my day.
- jetti 9y ago
  >There's a reason why Chicago was the only major city to drop in population the last couple of years. There aren't that many interesting projects happening, it's not conducive to start-ups I would say it has more to do with the Illinois rather than the city itself. People are leaving Illinois, not just Chicago. Also, the startup culture is different in Chicago but to say there there aren't that many interesting projects happening is entirely subjective. Also, startups aren't the only companies doing interesting work as well. There is a ton of interesting work in the finance sector. There are also a bunch of very interesting startups such as Uptake and Tempus. >Pay is crap.. people have been clamoring that the midwest is going to be the next silicon alley. Cost of living is also significantly lower as well.
humanrebar 9y ago
Seems odd to do an analysis of Midwestern culture and not bring up its religious differences with the rest of America, especially the South, which is generally more Baptist and charismatic.
le-mark 9y ago
I found this piece to be interesting, but rather odd too. For example from the middle; I took the first option. As a child, I accepted without thinking that my small town, a city of 9,383 people, contained within it every possible human type; if I could not fit in here, I would not fit in anywhere. (“Fitting in” I defined as being occupied on Friday nights and, sooner or later, kissing a girl.) Every week that passed in which I did not meet these criteria—which was most of them—became a prophecy. Every perception, every idea, every opinion that I could not make immediately legible to my peers became proof of an almost metaphysical estrangement, an oceanic differentness that could not be changed and could not be borne. ... I knew that cities existed, but they were all surely just Michigan farm towns joined together n number of times, depending on population. Owing to a basically phlegmatic temperament, and the fear of hurting my parents, I made it to college without committing suicide; there, the thing solved itself. But I worry what would have happened—what does often happen—to the kid like me, but with worse test scores, bad parents, an unlocked gun cabinet. This sounds like the general lament of an intelligent, intellectually curious person growing up than anything specific to the midwest. Of course ones ideas aren't understood, and if too many big words are used then one marks themselves as "talking funny". There are a great many under the 75th percentile after all. The one thing I found missing from the present article was the nearly total absence of oppurtunity in all these rural midwestern towns. A whole lot of my peers put a trailer on Mom/Dads (or Grandma/Grandpa's) land, and eked lives somehow. I honestly don't know how. The poverty, the grinding hopelessness is endemic for the region. So yeah, there's nothing else to talk about, so you talk about the neighbors, or that strange kid at school who wear's the sweater with puff balls. And don't by any means be different lest you be gossiped about as well.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  >>> ... and eked lives somehow. I honestly don't know how. Drugs? Or some other invisible economy? I had the same impression of late-90s Vancouver. No real growth outside of real estate, but lots of people with piles of cash and a huge population who never seemed to work but still made rent each month. In BC pot brought in, by some estimates, more money than forestry and mining combined. Now it's purely real estate.
EADGBE 9y ago
"reporter Alec McGillis marveled at the cheapness—and, it seems, the mere presence—of good orchestra and museum tickets in interior cities" I'm always impressed that foreigners (I'll call them that, since they tend to think the same of us) discount art from the heartland simply by being shocked it even exists.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Are you implying that them being aware of the place, possibly relocating there and participating in local government is better?
dsschnau 9y ago
born and raised in michigan, lived all over the state. I hope i die here. This nerd doesn't know shit
- cableshaft 9y ago
  Michigan is very pretty, and has lots of nice areas, especially around Lake Michigan. I like to visit when I get the chance. I imagine the winters would be pretty rough there though. I live near Chicago and they get pretty bad here, usually.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Outside the lake effect snow belts, the weather isn't all that different from Chicago, the lakes really moderate the cold. Most of Michigan stays warmer than Central Wisconsin or Minnesota. I guess a large area gets lake effect snow though.
- Helloworldboy 9y ago
  Grew up on the other side of the lake in WI. Feel the same way
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  > This nerd doesn't know shit While you probably have a point, this isn't a very professional or productive way of expressing your opinion. edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Is "This nerd doesn't know shit" really the kind of dialog that we want to promote on this site?
  - snerbles 9y ago
    It's merely a distilled reply to the academic masturbation that is this article.
  - MrLeap 9y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but calling him out on his language is significantly less interesting than the thing the parent said. If your quote was the only thing he said you'd be right. I think the quote added a lot of context and information his message though. > born and raised in michigan, lived all over the state. I hope i die here. That statement on its own communicates he likes Michigan, has no interest in moving. > This nerd doesn't know shit Adding this sentence modifies my interpretation of the first. This guy _loves_ Michigan. He feels strongly about his community and the contents of the article offend him. We can nitpick the insult on the end or the language he used, but I think what he had to say about Michigan was "putting himself out there" a little bit that makes it harder to do. It didn't feel like trolling to me, felt like a genuine dude with genuine things to say.
jccalhoun 9y ago
Flatness is mentioned five times. Not where I grew up and there are certainly days in the warm months when I struggle to ride my bicycle up hills that I wish all of the midwest was flat.
- lostapathy 9y ago
  I'm from Kansas, I get so sick of hearing how flat it is here. Florida and Illinois are both much flatter, and oddly enough I hear how flat Kansas is from residents of both. Nobody carries on about Texas being flat and boring, yet it's only marginally less flat than Kansas.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    Oh, believe me, they do. But the flatness is kind of relative.
  - pnutjam 9y ago
    <i>Nobody carries on about Texas being flat and boring...</i>Well then, you heard it here first. What's the worst thing about Texas? There's so much of it.
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merolish 9y ago
I moved to Minneapolis last month after working as a software developer in NYC for twelve years. It still feels like I'm on vacation in comparison, with all this space and a reasonable cost of living. My main concern is career development with the thinner tech scene out here (Chicago didn't seem bad when I looked, although I'd prefer somewhere smaller).
- ryanx435 9y ago
  the tech scene isn't very broad, but there is a lot of depth in the medical device scene. Also, surprisingly, a lot of developer jobs with some of the bigger banks and the insurance companies.
  - strictnein 9y ago
    Yeah, US Bank, Wells Fargo, American Express, and Ameriprise have significant presences here. Also lots of tech jobs at Target and Best Buy, and firms like UnitedHealth Group, General Mills, and Cargill.
- protomyth 9y ago
  > reasonable cost of living. Housing prices on the Minneapolis side of the river are much better than the St. Paul side. Sadly, living on the opposite side of the river from your job is just horrible.
- wombatpm 9y ago
  Chicago born, moved to Minneapolis for school and work. Lived there 8 years. While everyone was nice, found it very weird that any conversation that started spontaneously (Stores, parks, etc) always seemed to be with people from somewhere else. The running joke was people are nice, but they are just not taking applications for friends at this time.
Veelox 9y ago
I grew up in the Midwest and moved to Silicon Valley. I think that people here don't understand what this author describes as "Midwestern history is a study in racial quarantine." I would go as far as to say that racial is the wrong word to describe what happens in the Midwest. I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us." This can be affected by where you live, where you work, where you go to church, where your kids go to school, what kind of car you drive, what you do for fun, how you dress, even how you talk. Midwesterners are happy to accept someone who matches them in all these areas regardless of skin color. This is why you get backlash from them when you call them racist because the criteria they use is not skin color its all the other stuff. Yet on the other hand, most PoC in the Midwest have a culture that is different on most of the above. So when a white Midwesterner doesn't treat a black Midwesterner that speaks, dresses, even walks differently as a part of the community is it racism? I would say no since it isn't about race but is about culture. But on the other hand, when most white people do this to most black people, it sure does start to look like it. This puts the Midwest in a really hard place because just about any white person can claim (truthfully) they are not being racist. Yet, the outcome of the collective actions of all of them end up with a pretty strong divide that is mostly along racial lines. Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this? One option would be to have the cultures integrate so there are not sub communities for PoC. This doesn't seem to have worked. But the other option is that you expect Midwesterners to treat people from outside their community the same as people inside their community. That isn't going to happen. So it seems like it is an impossible situation.
- Frondo 9y ago
  My first thought is how we need to start developing a better working vocabulary around having racist attitudes. Like the big-R Racist is the white power asshole who wants to create a white ethnostate--that's one that's easy to spot, and most of us can say we're not that. The real pernicious damage to communities of color comes from the little-r racism that SO SO MANY people carry around totally unthinkingly. Like even my pretty progressive sister will spout off something like "well if they'd just work harder, or get a better job," when in reality there's a well-documented bias against hiring people with "black" names. The big-R Racism is easy to defeat, because most of us see it as pretty noxious. The little-r racism is so much tougher, because it's encoded into laws in innocent-seeming ways, it's encoded into algorithms in software (e.g. charging various rates by zip code, but zip code in many places ends up being a proxy for race, and who in this decade checked to make sure the assumptions you've encoded aren't just screwing over minorities), in a lot of unconscious biases (e.g. that AAVE is an uneducated form of english, not its own dialect). How do you call people's attention to that little-r racist stuff? Well, I don't know. The thing I do, and it feels like water dripping on stone, is I call out small assumptions whenever I see them, and I always, always draw attention to communities of color as being people, citizens, deserving of all equal opportunities (and pointing out how some law, algorithm, or assumption is denying them one). It's a real gentle advocacy, but it's also easy to stick to because it's absolutely the right thing to do once you see how stacked against CoC the system is.
losteverything 9y ago
Strahler and Strahler's college text charted how people like their own region and dont like others as much. Perceptions are strong Having 50% midwestern life and 50% east coast, i size up the people first before i say im from (midwest state) or (eastern state). Also, rent a car with same-state plates when you move into a new house from out of state. Most of your neighbors will make assumptions about you if the state plate is different. Once you get cars registered put on the new plates and return the rental. Where are the new neighbors from? "New York" "Montana" "Florida" "Massachusetts" "Iowa" "Utah" "California" Pushy,outdoorsy,poor or old, liberal, farmers, Mormon, nutty
ph33t 9y ago
An observation ... just the fact that many here treat the "midwest" as one place in their comments speaks of maybe misunderstanding/ignorance or even arrogance. As a person who has lived in Wisconsin (suburban and rural), Minnesota (urban and suburban), and Chicago, there is an absolutely astounding difference in people, attitude, and culture in all 3 areas. Granted none are really like the east or west coasts, but they are all vastly different places to live.
- linkregister 9y ago
  I'm deeply offended that you decided to lump in my town in the Bay Area with the rest of the West Coast. There's an astounding difference in culture between it and San Diego. /s Seriously, though, at some point we have to group regions together. All American cities have more similarities than differences. Regions do share some commonalities. I'm not sure what you expect from this piece. The author mentions that there are differences between the various cities in the region, contrasting Detroit with Cleveland. Should he have gone into more detail?
- protomyth 9y ago
  Yeah, the whole idea of "midwest" is pretty flawed. Like a lot of places you really need to look at the migration patterns that made up the communities (including what tribes got shoved where). I've often said that all these scifi maps about the breakup of the US that have ND and MN in the same country just don't get how far the area has diverged. Heck, the difference between St. Cloud MN and Minneapolis MN is amazing.
  - onychomys 9y ago
    Well yeah, because St. Cloud is the armpit of Minnesota.
    - protomyth 9y ago
      St. Cloud actually has nice people who get mighty offended when you won't let them help you. I reserve derogatory comments for some of the Twin City suburbs.
komali2 9y ago
I appreciate the effort the author put into this (and he/she is clearly a good writer), but as a Wisconsinite I can't help but chuckle at the length and type of content - it's thousands of well-chosen words in an academic voice describing... the Midwest. To me, nothing is more definitively a real metaphor for "boring" than my home.
programminggeek 9y ago
This is about tribes, not races. Midwest is very much a rural vs. urban notion more than a racial one.
fahayekwasright 9y ago
Growing up in Indiana, I thought my home was backward and boring, and wanted to see what the rest of the world had to offer. After spending 10 years in a variety of cities across the world, I was relieved to find that Indiana houses were still cheap enough that I could buy one and move back.
tengbretson 9y ago
> the vast majority of humans have worked hard, or been worked hard, for all of recorded history Huh that's an interesting way of saying that... > a person might explain these tropes of featurelessness by pointing out the similarities imposed across the Midwestern landscape by capitalism. Oh. That's why. Trash article.
randyrand 9y ago
A little too much liberal hogwash for my taste - e.g trying to explain as much as possible with skin-color identity politics. But glad others liked the article.
mcguire 9y ago
The author here implicitly assumes the truth of the descriptions of the Midwest and Midwesterners that he discusses. Further, also assumes that nothing changes, nothing happens in the Midwest. (I particularly liked the intro; now try describing the Midwest to someone who doesn't actually love there.) Everyone is from the Midwest or describing the Midwest, no one seems to be living there. Here's a hint: there is no Midwest. That should be obvious; it's roughly twice as far from Oklahoma City to St. Louis as from London to Paris. If you want to read about the past of the central part of the US, can I suggest a brilliant writer who isn't mentioned in the article: Walter Prescott Webb. See The Great Plains or The Frontier.
- notfromhere 9y ago
  Lumping the west plains and midwest together into one region seems weird. In my mind, midwest is purely the great lakes states.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    To an extent, that's true. But they really have more in common than either does with any other region.
rrhd 9y ago
> Canada and our Midwest share, among other things, manners, weather, topography, and a tendency among their inhabitants to downplay their own racism uh okay. The author does no Canada is larger than the US? Seems kind of ridiculous to paint an entire country like this.
gamechangr 9y ago
I grew up in the Midwest (Kansas City) .The first problem is no one knows who is being described. "Midwestern" - It's a term used by the media. They tell us it includes Oklahoma and North Dakota (which are insanely different?). It's supposed to include Chicago, Milwaukee, Omaha, and Topeka? Half of the West coast thinks "midwest" includes the South? They need a new term....badly.
socalnate1 9y ago
Sorta related, vox had this great article and interactive poll as to which states are actually in the midwest, really interesting. https://www.vox.com/2016/1/27/10825534/which-states-in-midwest https://www.vox.com/2016/1/27/10825534/which-states-in-midwe...
analog31 9y ago
What I'd like to know is if any other place is substantially different. I lived in Texas for a while, and met relatively few people who behaved like stereotypical Texans. I live in Wisconsin, and it is a divided state. There is heavy racial segregation, plus strong red/blue and city/rural divisions. That makes it pretty hard to identify a single unifying culture. Perhaps all the Midwest lacks is branding.
RickJWag 9y ago
I was raised in Mitchell, South Dakota, a midwest town of about 15,000. The vast majority were white, a small number of Native Americans (we all called them Indians back then) and just one black family. The black family's father was elected mayor, he was popular. There was some racism, not as much as people seem to think. IMHO, I've seen more racism in bigger cities.

140 points by samclemens 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Nice read! My wife and I just moved to Urbana/Champaign Illinois 4 months ago for my new job, and the Midwest really is different (from Arizona and California where we lived before). People are really nice, food is great, very inexpensive place to live, and there is real natural beauty here if you look for it. Anyways, we are delighted with this area.

pure_ambition 9y ago
Check out Allerton Park if you haven't already! The trails are amazing.
- cableshaft 9y ago
  A friend got married there. It's a really pretty place. Has a giant mansion on the premises too that he used for the reception.
pm90 9y ago
Former UIUC student... just wait till it starts snowing ;). But in all seriousness: the town(s) do have their charm. And if you're bored, its only a hour drive to Chicago. The affordability was actually what attracted me as a student: I had a rather high standard of living for the money I was living on.
adam 9y ago
Congrats on the move. I grew up in Champaign. I wanted to get out of there by the time I was 18, but now I get back at least once a year and have a new appreciation for the place. Go to Papa Dels pizza if you haven't been. Get the deep dish. It will change your life.
- fotbr 9y ago
  I've been preaching the goodness that is Papa Dels since I was out there for a conference and programming competition at UIUC in the very early 2000s. Happy to see I'm not the only one. Just be aware, a slice of the deep dish is pretty much a meal by itself.
- chrisfinne 9y ago
  oh man, i forgot about that place. expensive for a student, so it was a rare treat!
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
> People are really nice, food is great, very inexpensive place to live, and there is real natural beauty here if you look for it. Anyways, we are delighted with this area. You probably shouldn't talk like that if you want it to stay that way... Denver is a warning, not a template. (I say this with partial sarcasm, obviously you can't fight change to some extent but being conscious of it and careful management to guide it's direction can prevent a lot of problems)
deleted 9y ago
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Karrot_Kream 9y ago
Of all the things I appreciated about the Champaign-Urbana area, the food was not one of them. But do check out the downtown Urbana area, it's a great place!
logfromblammo 9y ago
Whenever we drive nearby, the spouse and I wonder if the people from Normal are really just a bunch of freaks, and they just named the city that as a ruse. Obviously, all the "normal" people must therefore live in Bloomington.
- neolefty 9y ago
  Normal! I grew up in Illinois too [1] and spent a few years in Oblong, population 1700. Its claim to fame was a newspaper headline, "Oblong man marries Normal woman." [1] and now live a stone's throw away in Indiana near Purdue U

ataturk 9y ago

What a bunch of self-aggrandizing drivel.

jerf 9y ago

Speaking as a Midwesterener, it was a valiant attempt to examine the Midwest without descending into contempt and cliches, but alas, it ultimately failed, and failed hard. Partial credit given for making it for a few paragraphs before descending into the usual trite analysis.

domparise 9y ago
Speaking also as a Midwesterner, I would disagree. I was born and raised in Michigan, and have not really left much other than to couch hop and envy the lives of my friends who've moved out to the coast. I feel that the contempt the author descends into is self-inflicted, and may representative of the culture and authors midwestern upbringing. From what I've observed, midwesterners are brutally humble, almost to a fault, probably stemming from the deeply rooted conservative values. Being midwestern, to me, is not its own identity, but rather a lack of the other negative identities of the regions. Speaking in terms of stereotypes I hear here (not trying to discredit these regions) the vibe is: I'm NOT a no-patience jerk like on the east coast, I'm NOT lazy and pretentious like on the west coast, I'm NOT shallow and two-faced like in the south, therefore, as a midwesterner my strongest identity is defined by a lack of those negative associations. Midwesterns choose not to be defined by what they are, which I see as no-nonsense and generally pretty authentic and genuine, but rather by what they are not. "We are not all of those bad things those other people in those other places are, and that's our best quality." But through my travels I've learned that not all people in those places are like that, and not all midwesterners are nice, but in general they prefer to be viewed as collective lack of bad things, rather than a collection of good things. This, plus an underlying more conservative and humble perspective, I feel gives light to the lack of regional identity that is perceived by people both inside and outside of the Midwest.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  This is an excellent analysis. The author hints at something similar in the article: "['flyover country' is] a stereotype about other people’s stereotypes". Which I thought was also really an excellent description turn of phrase

humanrebar 9y ago

> ...humility is one of those words, like authenticity or (lately) resistance, that serves mainly to advertise the absence of the thing named... Humility is having a realistic view of your own abilities and worth while being OK with it. It's not a vacuum of self-worth or something. We have other words for that. To illustrate, it's not humble for LeBron James to say he's bad at basketball. It would be humble for him to claim his ability while internalizing his limitations, both on the court and off. So, to bring this back to Midwesterners, a Midwestern might say, "Yeah, I'm a great programmer, but it's not like I'm going to change the world through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility. Pass the green bean casserole, please."

EADGBE 9y ago
I've found there's a lot of us talented in the art of programming; whom don't always take it so seriously. That doesn't happen much outside of here.
sp332 9y ago
I think it just meant that someone who claims to be humble is probably bragging. Not that no one is humble.
- mastax 9y ago
  Yes like the standard award acceptance speech "I feel so humbled..."
- Veelox 9y ago
  I see humility as having a proper understanding of your own ability without arrogance. If I am at Thanksgiving dinner and my mom tries to brag that I am the best programmer in the state it is humble to correct her in saying that even though I have a great job, there are a lot of things I still cannot do.
  - sp332 9y ago
    But look at the context. "Authenticity" has been made meaningless, so any mass-produced focus-grouped consumer product can be called "authentic". And it's now the same with humble, which mean that it should describe something small, frugal, or at least not-ostentatious. But now big, splurgy things or places call themselves humble.

rayiner 9y ago

> In a 2015 essay for Slate, “The Rust-Belt Theory of Low-Cost High Culture,” reporter Alec McGillis marveled at the cheapness—and, it seems, the mere presence—of good orchestra and museum tickets in interior cities: One fact of history that’s often overlooked is that patronage has left an incredible legacy in places like Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc. For example, one of the finest collections of French Impressionism in the US is not in New York or San Francisco, but Philadelphia. The art museums in Pittsburgh are amazing, easily worth the (very affordable) trip out to see them. We tend to define these cities by the decline of their industrial economic base, but we forget their history. The age of the industrialists started in about 1860. By 1900, Cleveland, Buffalo, Cincinatti, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Pittsburgh were among the 15 largest cities in the country (the top 15 also included Philadelphia and Baltimore—two cities which have phenomenal culture compared to what you’d expect based on their present economies). Cleveland, with its famous orchestra, was one of the ten largest US cities from 1890-1970.

m_mueller 9y ago
Wait, is Philly considered Midwestern, not East Coast?
- QAPereo 9y ago
  It's definitely East Coast.
- rayiner 9y ago
  I mentioned Philly and Baltimore because although they’re on the east coast, they are port cities that suffiered along with the decline of the rust belt and never recovered. Philly is one of the poorest large cities in the US, but used to be very rich.
- santaclaus 9y ago
  I've never heard Philly as considered Midwest. Northeast for sure [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis
- 9y ago

throwaway15814 9y ago

Just moved out of the midwest.. I was originally from the East coast and moved back. I'll just say this, being a minority, I was shocked at how much contempt people had towards middle-easterners and black people. On numerous occasions people have said they've been "dirtying up the neighborhoods which is why they moved to another burb... they need to take better care of their lawns, etc". Out of all the companies that I've worked in the midwest, I've ever had a co-worker that was a black software engineer. People are put down in unfortunate ways. it's really fucking hard to climb up the corporate ladder than either coasts Pay is crap.. people have been clamoring that the midwest is going to be the next silicon alley. There's a reason why Chicago was the only major city to drop in population the last couple of years. There aren't that many interesting projects happening, it's not conducive to start-ups. i've had more arguments in the midwest with people that think tesla is a POS company for not following the rules. there's a lot of people averse to change.

rayiner 9y ago
> i've had more arguments in the midwest with people that think tesla is a POS company for not following the rules. there's a lot of people averse to change. That is, in contrast, what I love about the Midwest. The other day, I was snaking around the line barriers at the airport security, even though it was empty. At the end, there was a man and his young son waiting for me. He explained somewhat embarrassed that his son had wanted to walk under the guide ropes, which they did, but then they waited because he didn’t want to cut me in line. Being from DC, where people treat trying to merge as a personal insult, that made my day.
jetti 9y ago
>There's a reason why Chicago was the only major city to drop in population the last couple of years. There aren't that many interesting projects happening, it's not conducive to start-ups I would say it has more to do with the Illinois rather than the city itself. People are leaving Illinois, not just Chicago. Also, the startup culture is different in Chicago but to say there there aren't that many interesting projects happening is entirely subjective. Also, startups aren't the only companies doing interesting work as well. There is a ton of interesting work in the finance sector. There are also a bunch of very interesting startups such as Uptake and Tempus. >Pay is crap.. people have been clamoring that the midwest is going to be the next silicon alley. Cost of living is also significantly lower as well.

humanrebar 9y ago

Seems odd to do an analysis of Midwestern culture and not bring up its religious differences with the rest of America, especially the South, which is generally more Baptist and charismatic.

le-mark 9y ago

I found this piece to be interesting, but rather odd too. For example from the middle; I took the first option. As a child, I accepted without thinking that my small town, a city of 9,383 people, contained within it every possible human type; if I could not fit in here, I would not fit in anywhere. (“Fitting in” I defined as being occupied on Friday nights and, sooner or later, kissing a girl.) Every week that passed in which I did not meet these criteria—which was most of them—became a prophecy. Every perception, every idea, every opinion that I could not make immediately legible to my peers became proof of an almost metaphysical estrangement, an oceanic differentness that could not be changed and could not be borne. ... I knew that cities existed, but they were all surely just Michigan farm towns joined together n number of times, depending on population. Owing to a basically phlegmatic temperament, and the fear of hurting my parents, I made it to college without committing suicide; there, the thing solved itself. But I worry what would have happened—what does often happen—to the kid like me, but with worse test scores, bad parents, an unlocked gun cabinet. This sounds like the general lament of an intelligent, intellectually curious person growing up than anything specific to the midwest. Of course ones ideas aren't understood, and if too many big words are used then one marks themselves as "talking funny". There are a great many under the 75th percentile after all. The one thing I found missing from the present article was the nearly total absence of oppurtunity in all these rural midwestern towns. A whole lot of my peers put a trailer on Mom/Dads (or Grandma/Grandpa's) land, and eked lives somehow. I honestly don't know how. The poverty, the grinding hopelessness is endemic for the region. So yeah, there's nothing else to talk about, so you talk about the neighbors, or that strange kid at school who wear's the sweater with puff balls. And don't by any means be different lest you be gossiped about as well.

sandworm101 9y ago
>>> ... and eked lives somehow. I honestly don't know how. Drugs? Or some other invisible economy? I had the same impression of late-90s Vancouver. No real growth outside of real estate, but lots of people with piles of cash and a huge population who never seemed to work but still made rent each month. In BC pot brought in, by some estimates, more money than forestry and mining combined. Now it's purely real estate.

EADGBE 9y ago

"reporter Alec McGillis marveled at the cheapness—and, it seems, the mere presence—of good orchestra and museum tickets in interior cities" I'm always impressed that foreigners (I'll call them that, since they tend to think the same of us) discount art from the heartland simply by being shocked it even exists.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Are you implying that them being aware of the place, possibly relocating there and participating in local government is better?

dsschnau 9y ago

born and raised in michigan, lived all over the state. I hope i die here. This nerd doesn't know shit

cableshaft 9y ago
Michigan is very pretty, and has lots of nice areas, especially around Lake Michigan. I like to visit when I get the chance. I imagine the winters would be pretty rough there though. I live near Chicago and they get pretty bad here, usually.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Outside the lake effect snow belts, the weather isn't all that different from Chicago, the lakes really moderate the cold. Most of Michigan stays warmer than Central Wisconsin or Minnesota. I guess a large area gets lake effect snow though.
Helloworldboy 9y ago
Grew up on the other side of the lake in WI. Feel the same way
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
> This nerd doesn't know shit While you probably have a point, this isn't a very professional or productive way of expressing your opinion. edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Is "This nerd doesn't know shit" really the kind of dialog that we want to promote on this site?
- snerbles 9y ago
  It's merely a distilled reply to the academic masturbation that is this article.
- MrLeap 9y ago
  I didn't downvote you, but calling him out on his language is significantly less interesting than the thing the parent said. If your quote was the only thing he said you'd be right. I think the quote added a lot of context and information his message though. > born and raised in michigan, lived all over the state. I hope i die here. That statement on its own communicates he likes Michigan, has no interest in moving. > This nerd doesn't know shit Adding this sentence modifies my interpretation of the first. This guy _loves_ Michigan. He feels strongly about his community and the contents of the article offend him. We can nitpick the insult on the end or the language he used, but I think what he had to say about Michigan was "putting himself out there" a little bit that makes it harder to do. It didn't feel like trolling to me, felt like a genuine dude with genuine things to say.

jccalhoun 9y ago

Flatness is mentioned five times. Not where I grew up and there are certainly days in the warm months when I struggle to ride my bicycle up hills that I wish all of the midwest was flat.

lostapathy 9y ago
I'm from Kansas, I get so sick of hearing how flat it is here. Florida and Illinois are both much flatter, and oddly enough I hear how flat Kansas is from residents of both. Nobody carries on about Texas being flat and boring, yet it's only marginally less flat than Kansas.
- mcguire 9y ago
  Oh, believe me, they do. But the flatness is kind of relative.
- pnutjam 9y ago
  <i>Nobody carries on about Texas being flat and boring...</i>Well then, you heard it here first. What's the worst thing about Texas? There's so much of it.

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merolish 9y ago

I moved to Minneapolis last month after working as a software developer in NYC for twelve years. It still feels like I'm on vacation in comparison, with all this space and a reasonable cost of living. My main concern is career development with the thinner tech scene out here (Chicago didn't seem bad when I looked, although I'd prefer somewhere smaller).

ryanx435 9y ago
the tech scene isn't very broad, but there is a lot of depth in the medical device scene. Also, surprisingly, a lot of developer jobs with some of the bigger banks and the insurance companies.
- strictnein 9y ago
  Yeah, US Bank, Wells Fargo, American Express, and Ameriprise have significant presences here. Also lots of tech jobs at Target and Best Buy, and firms like UnitedHealth Group, General Mills, and Cargill.
protomyth 9y ago
> reasonable cost of living. Housing prices on the Minneapolis side of the river are much better than the St. Paul side. Sadly, living on the opposite side of the river from your job is just horrible.
wombatpm 9y ago
Chicago born, moved to Minneapolis for school and work. Lived there 8 years. While everyone was nice, found it very weird that any conversation that started spontaneously (Stores, parks, etc) always seemed to be with people from somewhere else. The running joke was people are nice, but they are just not taking applications for friends at this time.

Veelox 9y ago

I grew up in the Midwest and moved to Silicon Valley. I think that people here don't understand what this author describes as "Midwestern history is a study in racial quarantine." I would go as far as to say that racial is the wrong word to describe what happens in the Midwest. I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us." This can be affected by where you live, where you work, where you go to church, where your kids go to school, what kind of car you drive, what you do for fun, how you dress, even how you talk. Midwesterners are happy to accept someone who matches them in all these areas regardless of skin color. This is why you get backlash from them when you call them racist because the criteria they use is not skin color its all the other stuff. Yet on the other hand, most PoC in the Midwest have a culture that is different on most of the above. So when a white Midwesterner doesn't treat a black Midwesterner that speaks, dresses, even walks differently as a part of the community is it racism? I would say no since it isn't about race but is about culture. But on the other hand, when most white people do this to most black people, it sure does start to look like it. This puts the Midwest in a really hard place because just about any white person can claim (truthfully) they are not being racist. Yet, the outcome of the collective actions of all of them end up with a pretty strong divide that is mostly along racial lines. Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this? One option would be to have the cultures integrate so there are not sub communities for PoC. This doesn't seem to have worked. But the other option is that you expect Midwesterners to treat people from outside their community the same as people inside their community. That isn't going to happen. So it seems like it is an impossible situation.

Frondo 9y ago
My first thought is how we need to start developing a better working vocabulary around having racist attitudes. Like the big-R Racist is the white power asshole who wants to create a white ethnostate--that's one that's easy to spot, and most of us can say we're not that. The real pernicious damage to communities of color comes from the little-r racism that SO SO MANY people carry around totally unthinkingly. Like even my pretty progressive sister will spout off something like "well if they'd just work harder, or get a better job," when in reality there's a well-documented bias against hiring people with "black" names. The big-R Racism is easy to defeat, because most of us see it as pretty noxious. The little-r racism is so much tougher, because it's encoded into laws in innocent-seeming ways, it's encoded into algorithms in software (e.g. charging various rates by zip code, but zip code in many places ends up being a proxy for race, and who in this decade checked to make sure the assumptions you've encoded aren't just screwing over minorities), in a lot of unconscious biases (e.g. that AAVE is an uneducated form of english, not its own dialect). How do you call people's attention to that little-r racist stuff? Well, I don't know. The thing I do, and it feels like water dripping on stone, is I call out small assumptions whenever I see them, and I always, always draw attention to communities of color as being people, citizens, deserving of all equal opportunities (and pointing out how some law, algorithm, or assumption is denying them one). It's a real gentle advocacy, but it's also easy to stick to because it's absolutely the right thing to do once you see how stacked against CoC the system is.

losteverything 9y ago

Strahler and Strahler's college text charted how people like their own region and dont like others as much. Perceptions are strong Having 50% midwestern life and 50% east coast, i size up the people first before i say im from (midwest state) or (eastern state). Also, rent a car with same-state plates when you move into a new house from out of state. Most of your neighbors will make assumptions about you if the state plate is different. Once you get cars registered put on the new plates and return the rental. Where are the new neighbors from? "New York" "Montana" "Florida" "Massachusetts" "Iowa" "Utah" "California" Pushy,outdoorsy,poor or old, liberal, farmers, Mormon, nutty

ph33t 9y ago

An observation ... just the fact that many here treat the "midwest" as one place in their comments speaks of maybe misunderstanding/ignorance or even arrogance. As a person who has lived in Wisconsin (suburban and rural), Minnesota (urban and suburban), and Chicago, there is an absolutely astounding difference in people, attitude, and culture in all 3 areas. Granted none are really like the east or west coasts, but they are all vastly different places to live.

linkregister 9y ago
I'm deeply offended that you decided to lump in my town in the Bay Area with the rest of the West Coast. There's an astounding difference in culture between it and San Diego. /s Seriously, though, at some point we have to group regions together. All American cities have more similarities than differences. Regions do share some commonalities. I'm not sure what you expect from this piece. The author mentions that there are differences between the various cities in the region, contrasting Detroit with Cleveland. Should he have gone into more detail?
protomyth 9y ago
Yeah, the whole idea of "midwest" is pretty flawed. Like a lot of places you really need to look at the migration patterns that made up the communities (including what tribes got shoved where). I've often said that all these scifi maps about the breakup of the US that have ND and MN in the same country just don't get how far the area has diverged. Heck, the difference between St. Cloud MN and Minneapolis MN is amazing.
- onychomys 9y ago
  Well yeah, because St. Cloud is the armpit of Minnesota.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    St. Cloud actually has nice people who get mighty offended when you won't let them help you. I reserve derogatory comments for some of the Twin City suburbs.

komali2 9y ago

I appreciate the effort the author put into this (and he/she is clearly a good writer), but as a Wisconsinite I can't help but chuckle at the length and type of content - it's thousands of well-chosen words in an academic voice describing... the Midwest. To me, nothing is more definitively a real metaphor for "boring" than my home.

programminggeek 9y ago

This is about tribes, not races. Midwest is very much a rural vs. urban notion more than a racial one.

fahayekwasright 9y ago

Growing up in Indiana, I thought my home was backward and boring, and wanted to see what the rest of the world had to offer. After spending 10 years in a variety of cities across the world, I was relieved to find that Indiana houses were still cheap enough that I could buy one and move back.

tengbretson 9y ago

> the vast majority of humans have worked hard, or been worked hard, for all of recorded history Huh that's an interesting way of saying that... > a person might explain these tropes of featurelessness by pointing out the similarities imposed across the Midwestern landscape by capitalism. Oh. That's why. Trash article.

randyrand 9y ago

A little too much liberal hogwash for my taste - e.g trying to explain as much as possible with skin-color identity politics. But glad others liked the article.

mcguire 9y ago

The author here implicitly assumes the truth of the descriptions of the Midwest and Midwesterners that he discusses. Further, also assumes that nothing changes, nothing happens in the Midwest. (I particularly liked the intro; now try describing the Midwest to someone who doesn't actually love there.) Everyone is from the Midwest or describing the Midwest, no one seems to be living there. Here's a hint: there is no Midwest. That should be obvious; it's roughly twice as far from Oklahoma City to St. Louis as from London to Paris. If you want to read about the past of the central part of the US, can I suggest a brilliant writer who isn't mentioned in the article: Walter Prescott Webb. See The Great Plains or The Frontier.

notfromhere 9y ago
Lumping the west plains and midwest together into one region seems weird. In my mind, midwest is purely the great lakes states.
- mcguire 9y ago
  To an extent, that's true. But they really have more in common than either does with any other region.

rrhd 9y ago

> Canada and our Midwest share, among other things, manners, weather, topography, and a tendency among their inhabitants to downplay their own racism uh okay. The author does no Canada is larger than the US? Seems kind of ridiculous to paint an entire country like this.

gamechangr 9y ago

I grew up in the Midwest (Kansas City) .The first problem is no one knows who is being described. "Midwestern" - It's a term used by the media. They tell us it includes Oklahoma and North Dakota (which are insanely different?). It's supposed to include Chicago, Milwaukee, Omaha, and Topeka? Half of the West coast thinks "midwest" includes the South? They need a new term....badly.

socalnate1 9y ago

Sorta related, vox had this great article and interactive poll as to which states are actually in the midwest, really interesting. https://www.vox.com/2016/1/27/10825534/which-states-in-midwest https://www.vox.com/2016/1/27/10825534/which-states-in-midwe...

analog31 9y ago

What I'd like to know is if any other place is substantially different. I lived in Texas for a while, and met relatively few people who behaved like stereotypical Texans. I live in Wisconsin, and it is a divided state. There is heavy racial segregation, plus strong red/blue and city/rural divisions. That makes it pretty hard to identify a single unifying culture. Perhaps all the Midwest lacks is branding.

RickJWag 9y ago

I was raised in Mitchell, South Dakota, a midwest town of about 15,000. The vast majority were white, a small number of Native Americans (we all called them Indians back then) and just one black family. The black family's father was elected mayor, he was popular. There was some racism, not as much as people seem to think. IMHO, I've seen more racism in bigger cities.