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The Midwest poll
(See the results are here.)
I'm putting this post up to invite commentary on the poll about midwestern states. I ask that you first submit your votes then put any commentary here.
I won't comment for now as I'm trying to be mere observer. But please share all opinions openly.
GalloPinto has offered the first bit of frustration because of Kansas' apparent marginalization. "Why doesn't anyone think that Kansas is in the Midwest?????????" she demands.
hahahahhahaha I LOVE it! I started commentary! I'm interested to hear your views when the poll ends!
ReplyDeleteOh, and I did vote for Ohio being Midwest, however, until I went to college in IL I didn't consider Ohio Midwest - I considered it East...
ReplyDeleteI LOVE that you're doing this. Being a native Missourian, I am sympathetic with the comment about Kansas, because we consider Kansas and Missouri (and also possibly Oklahoma - where's Oklahoma?) part of the Midwest, no question - I'd even go so far as to claim we think it as being the Ultimate in Midwesternness. But it shocks me (like, *shocks* me) how many people don't consider Missouri to be Midwestern. Also, in the tradition of language attitudes surveys (lots of which were administered by Preston or other people in Michigan, to Michiganders), I sometimes find myself having a very hard time with the regional categorizations they ask people to comment on or make - they've almost never accorded with my own. So I think we need a better understanding of how people categorize and conceptualize the country based on regional boundaries, depending on where they themselves are from or have experience with.
ReplyDeleteThe western end of Pennsylvania is in the Midwest, no doubt about it. But the eastern end is Northeast.
ReplyDeleteTo respond to pc, I must admit that my usage and understanding of "the Midwest" is largely historical. In my mind, Kansas is in the Midwest, while Missouri in not. This is based entirely on the Civil War. Missouri sided with the Confederacy (with some caveats) while the Kansan Free Soilers fought border skirmishes with them. What was to become Oklahoma also sided with the Confederacy (once again with caveats.) That's coming from someone raised in Iowa and living in Michigan.
ReplyDeleteOK I have to weigh in now that someone brought up Oklahoma. Gotta represent. (Yo?) Here is the question... is the poll defined historically, contemporarily as per geography, or contemporarily as per cultural self-labeling?
ReplyDelete"Midwest" as a word, to me, would mean the middle portion of the western half in absolute geography. So draw a line down the middle of the US and find the middle of the west half. Looks like Utah and some bordering states to me.
Historically, it's that Ohio-Indiana-Illinois area... not terribly mid nor west on the current US map, but way back when it was, as opposed to the west or far west which started around Iowa. This was based on a definition that called the west... pretty much anything that wasn't one of the original 13 states. It was a bad choice of words, because everything was west of the original coastal colonies. This has fundamentally to do with an anachronistic use of the word west as the basis for "Midwest", where "west" also had a broad, only vaguely directional meaning pertaining to the under/undeveloped frontier sections of the continent.
Culturally it would seem that Ohio-Indiana-Illinois corridor has the most people who consider themselves "midwestern". And this brings me back to my point, no one in Oklahoma considers the culture to be "midwestern". It is culturally, from a local perspective, considered "southwestern", though "heartland" is running a close race as the cultural description. "Heartland" is also used to describe Kansas and Nebraska, and having spent some time in both, I can say that Oklahoma shares more in common with Texas and New Mexico at a social level than it does with the aforementioned states, and precious little at all with the "midwestern culture" that isn't also part of broader US culture.
While I am new to your site, it was recommended so I decided to take the poll and add my two sense. I think that the term "midwest" is somewhat misleading depending on where you are. When I have lived in the East Coast it seems that people call anything the "midwest" that is between the Atlantic Coast and the Pacific Coast. When I lived in Michigan, there was a difference between the "upper midwest" and the "rest" of the midwest. Living in Colorado, people liked to consider themselves from the "Moutain West" unless you were from the "plains" in the eastern side of the state, then you might as well be from one of the "Plains states." Living in Texas they thought that they were their own country and, therefore, did not want to be identified with anything (but it also tended to be divided regionally between southwest and southeast). And finally, I find that living in New York no one cares about the midwest except to make fun of it.
ReplyDeleteBeing born in St. Paul, MN, living the first third of my life in IL [split between Southern (Marion) and Northwest Chicago], and the rest in SD and NE. I'm certain that I am the authority on all things Midwest.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, why are North and South Dakota marginalized so? Is there a giant moat separating MN and NE from the Dakotas that removes them from geographic similarity?
I thought Kansas/Nebraska/Iowa were the epitome of Midwest. They're the breadbasket, right? The states surrounding them (particularly to the north and east - Illinois, Indiana, the Dakotas) are Midwestern in ideology, but there's just not as much corn...
ReplyDeleteI've always thought of the midwest (a fist-shape extending from Ohio to Minnesota and Iowa) and the plains (those boxy states between the fist and the Rockies) to be different regions.
ReplyDelete