Feministe founder Lauren has an excellent article up in the American Prospect. Go read.
Dispatches From Flyover County
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Lauren? Who is this “Lauren” that you speak of?
/he he he he he he he
//bad joke :)
If it is anything like the Ohio where I attended college as several co-workers and friends who grew up/attended school there, however, my experiences is that the level of racism against interracial couples and non-Whites is noticeably greater than what I’ve experienced as a POC on the urban coastal cities/suburbs.
It was the only area in my life where I regularly witnessed and/or encountered White adolescents and young adults who would regularly drive by and shamelessly shout homophobic and racist slurs against classmates on a unpredictably constant basis. In one case, one driver yelling racist slurs even wanted to start a fight with me and came out of his car. Only the timely realization that a police car was trailing a few cars behind stopped him.
Lauren did make a good point about Obama’s bitterness quote, though, as some of this racist behavior against the college was partially motivated by the region’s poor economic state, the college’s domination of the local economy, and the classist derived elitism of many of the ostensibly radically left progressive student body…many of whom came from upper/upper-middle class urban/suburban areas on the coasts.
I can identify with a lot of what Lauren wrote. People in my program come from all over, and there’s always this ridiculous condescending bullshit sneer when I say that I dared to be from a midwetern city (not even a rural area, mind you), like I’m some dumb yokel that they let into graduate school out of pity or something.
It’s really tiring to have people continuously thinking that you’re from the motherfucking town in Footloose
I live in KY and I think that it deserves its reputation. Although there are are a few cool people here, but they’re few and far between.
As a current Indiana resident and a graduate of both Purdue University and Indiana University, Lauren’s article strikes home. I couldn’t agree more. Indiana has a very interesting history, and is home to Notre Dame, Purdue and Indiana University, all of which are home to some of the best academic programs in the entire country.
Indiana has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the entire Midwest, and has a reasonable cost of living. For instance, our home is nicer, bigger and 1/5 the cost of friends living in Dallas, Sacramento, New Jersey and Southern California. Also, I’ve found that the Midwest offers a real sense of community. People are generally friendly and good natured. I know that does not sound like much, but if you need help from a neighbor or get stranded in a car on the side of the road, people seem more than willing to help.
Don’t get me wrong, we love to travel and get away as much as anyone else, and unfortunately Indiana does not have a professional baseball team, but for daily living or building a family or career, the Midwest is not a bad choice.
Hell yes, echoing what I’ve been saying for a few years now. It gets profoundly frustrating year after year to have one’s activism dismissed because of electoral college returns or stereotypes of rednecks and cornfields. But again, my experience with party politics means that I trust Democrats about as far as I can throw them. I strongly suspect that its back to business as usual, and in spite of having critical races in Indiana that the Democrats must win, that it is already sold off.
Or to be blunt, I doubt that the 50-state initiative in which Democrats won Congress by choosing to put up a fight on the ground over house and senate seats, and scored more than a few red-district upsets in the process, can withstand the intense presidential-year focus on gaming the EC.
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