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On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

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Re: On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

#211

Post by LeifCarrotson »

Veelox wrote: post #61

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…

Wow. As someone still in the Midwest, this is a really clear explanation of what I see going on all around me (and that I try to fight within myself).

Travel helps. However, you can't count our annual mass migration down to the gulf coast for spring break because it's just a temporary transplant, and during it you're really only meeting other Midwesterners.

Re: On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

#212

Post by southphillyman »

Balgair wrote: post #101
evanlivingston wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

confederate flags are another example.

So stupid considering they were Union. I just don't understand it.

I went camping in French Creek PA , about 40 miles west of Philadelphia. Tons of confederate flags in that area. I guess it was about "history" for those folks too :/

Re: On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

#213

Post by stcredzero »

closeparen wrote: post #118
Veelox wrote: post #61

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…

The modern left-wing view of racism is as a systematic, structural power relationship between races. Individual decisions branching on skin color is neither necessary nor sufficient to get there, although it can and historically has contributed. For example, divesting from your neighborhood out of concern for your property value when PoC start to move in does not necessarily reflect an individual racial bias. It coul…

The modern left-wing view of racism is as a systematic, structural power relationship between races

So in other words, it's pretty much Marxism. Just s/races/classes/.

Re: On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

#214

Post by weberc2 »

twblalock wrote: post #190
Oxitendwe wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, to put it a different way, "You don't actually need to be racist in order to be racist."

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but that's correct under the explanation of racism given by the parent comment (which is not merely the left-wing view, but the consensus academic view). The example about divesting from a neighborhood due to concerns about property value is spot-on. In a systematically racist society, it is rational to behave in ways that produce racist outcomes even one does not person…

> which is not merely the left-wing view, but the consensus academic view

This follows only because academics (in relevant fields) are a strict subset of the left-wing (and generally the extreme left wing), and the relevant fields are in the middle of a reproducibility crisis largely due to their political confirmation bias. These fields are very open about their commitment to activism over objectivity (and many in these fields consider objectivity and reason to be "tools of white supremacy" or some similar nonsense). We shouldn't confuse "sociologists believe in X" with "X is true or even falsifiable".

Re: On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

#215

Post by logfromblammo »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #112
domparise wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fa…

>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…

I am from the Midwest, currently living in the South, and I think "shallow and two-faced" may actually be putting it too mildly. The idea that these assholes may actually elect Roy Moore after he unconstitutionally rammed his religion down other people's throats in an official capacity is bad enough, but after mounting credible evidence of him habitually creeping on 14-year-old girls as a grown-ass adult man? No f'kin' way.

Jared Fogle (the Subway creep) went to my high school in Indiana, and if he showed up to a reunion after getting out of the pokey, he would not get the same reception as Roy Moore currently gets in Gadsden, Alabama. Fogle couldn't win an election for county roadkill remover, much less senator for the whole state.

We don't rag on other regions as a matter of course, but we do judge them by their perceived shortcomings, even if we don't call them out on it.

And Midwesterners are stereotyped. We're small-minded, prudish, unfashionable, uncultured, suspicious, avoidant, passive-aggressive, and boring. We drink pop and weak beer and eat fried cheese. Didn't you know?

Re: On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

#216

Post by nickbauman »

stcredzero wrote: post #213
closeparen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern left-wing view of racism is as a systematic, structural power relationship between races. Individual decisions branching on skin color is neither necessary nor sufficient to get there, although it can and historically has contributed. For example, divesting from your neighborhood out of concern for your property value when PoC start to move in does not necessarily reflect an individual racial bias. It coul…

The modern left-wing view of racism is as a systematic, structural power relationship between races So in other words, it's pretty much Marxism. Just s/races/classes/.

Ha. Marxism adopted terms like "class struggle" from older, Classical political economic theory that came before it.

What the parent said is only the tip of the iceberg. Racism is a system to divide people so they are easier to control. So it hurts both black and white and other POC by making whites and browns fear downward mobility by making examples out of blacks and other out groups.

If you look at any of civil rights leaders who were killed (MLK, Malcom X f.e.), you will see that the worst punishment (assassination) is reserved for those who realized that it's not about just racism. It's about dividing people against each other. Trump has done this spectacularly by making whites fear P.O.C. all over again when it's his class, the plutocrats, who gain the most from sowing this division.

Re: On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

#217

Post by colechristensen »

maxerickson wrote: post #202
colechristensen wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, you just don't have the context to be making that argument. One article is about the south and the other one is about racist policies in the 30's. In the 30's there were essentially no people to be racist against in my community. You're talking about urban planning departments, the concept is ludicrous in my home town which you could walk across in an hour surrounded by towns which you could walk across b…

It can be an interesting exercise to look at the census demographics for a county between 1900 and now. My home county had more black residents in 1920 than in 1990. It wasn't accidental in many smaller towns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town I do expect that the Great Depression also contributed with small minority communities moving to cities.

Which I am sure is true for some places, but not all.

The census count for "black" in my county in 1920 and 1900 was 5. Not 5%, 5. It was 99.97% white.

It's a fact that people seem to have quite some trouble with. Much of the midwest is nearly entirely white (and at that a pretty narrow subset of northern europeans) because only a small set of people had any interest in settling there.

Re: On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

#218

Post by stillsut »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #163
torstenvl wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can think something is ridiculous all you want, but that doesn't make it inaccurate. You feel it's all a proxy for racism? Fine. Tell me, then: between an F-150 and a Silverado, which one is the "white" truck?

I don't think it's a proxy for racism. I think it's its own form of xenophobia. I don't care which one is the "white" truck, I care that someone's drawing major social distinctions on the difference between one truck and another.

Well if the truck is your work then obviously people are going to draw distinctions over it. Which operating system shows you're smart: Windows or Linux? Is it "xenophobic" to prefer linux people?

Also, Milton "ked" here. Of course I'd treat somebody from Milton differently, we share a whole unique culture which you clearly don't understand. You're the one being culturally ignorant: speaking of Milton and Medford as equivalent because of skin tone is the same as comparing a Sikh to Arab, cause you know, the funny hat and facial hair and stuff right?

Re: On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

#219

Post by csa »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #164
mcguire wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you are arguing that New Yorkers don't make a distinction between themselves and not-New Yorkers? I've never lived in New York; what about all those sitcom references to the differences between Manhattenites and Brooklyners? Or the Bronx? How can I, as a random Texan, tell the difference between someone from Gramercy Park and someone from New Jersey? (The part of me that wants to watch the world burn would like t…

We don't really make distinctions between fellow New Yorkers based on the kinds of tiny differences described. Our distribution has much more variance, so we need to go "further out" before we actually care. Like, New Jerseyans think New Yorkers are snobby, New Yorkers think New Jerseyans are sleazy and uncultured, but you'd never, ever expect people to have a problem working or living together because of the differe…

> Everyone is so mixed-up that "stick to your own kind" becomes nearly impossible.

This is about 180 degrees from all of my experience with NYC and New Yorkers. I find New Yorkers to be extremely tribal, and many of them are also extremely efficient at identifying folks from other tribes who may kind of look like them (at least from an outsider point of view).

To be fair, much of this tribalism may not be based on things like race or religious/church affiliation -- as you mentioned, that would make living and working in NYC extremely difficult.

That said, things like career field, social status, and how you spend your free time seem to matter quite a bit.

As a simple example, take your random high SES resident of the Upper East Side and have them go into a grocery store in a low SES neighborhood (race doesn't matter) and strike up a casual conversation with the cashier. It will be extremely awkward, and everyone will be looking at them. Flip the script and have someone from that same low SES neighborhood go to a grocery store in the nicer parts of the Upper East Side and do the same -- this will also most likely be awkward with everyone looking at them.

The example above uses two fairly extreme examples, but this happens along much finer lines as well. Where did people go to undergrad/grad? Where do people shop? Where do they go out? What neigborhood/building do they live in? What do they do in their spare time? All of these things are hyper-efficient shibboleths in NYC that largely do not matter in a random small town in the Midwest -- that is, you probably didn't go to college (one of the two state Us if you did), you shop at the only store in town or the nearest store if there are more than one, etc.

Re: On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

#220

Post by CodeCube »

Oxitendwe wrote: post #189
CodeCube wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does living next to someone else destroy an ethnic identity? Does a chinese family moving into an italian neighborhood all of a sudden mean that no one can open an italian restaurant? If there is a German festival one weekend, does that mean they can't have a Scottish highland festival the next weekend in the same venue? Does a Russian family moving in next door mean that I have to start drinking Vodka instead of…

>Does a chinese family moving into an italian neighborhood all of a sudden mean that no one can open an italian restaurant? No. It does mean a lot of other things though, like a vastly increased chance of chinese/italian intermarriage for their descendants, which means their descendants will not share your ethnic identity - it will be destroyed. Whether you think that's a good or a bad thing is an entirely different…

There it is ...

respectfully, I hope your mindset is extinguished and rendered extinct soon.

Disrespectfully ... well, I won't share my disrespectful thoughts here; just know that they exist.

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