Tag: migration

For the past several years, articles on Midwestern History and Culture seem to follow this same basic outline:

~ Personal anecdote about author’s small town roots or first visit to the Midwest~

~Inevitable description of a cornfield~

~Cutting remark about liberal coastal people’s perceptions of the Midwest made by an author from a liberal coastal publication~

~Tired revelation that Midwesterners are not simple provincial folk~

~Obligatory reference to 2016 election~

~Cautionary warning against generalizing a region at the end of an entire article generalizing the Midwest~

Even as Seemingly Every Article on Midwestern History and Culture aims to complicate understandings of the Midwest, they still start with the assumption that the Midwest is a static, white, rural place. This assumption is not reflected in the historical record, contemporary scholarship, or the lived experiences of so many Midwesterners (including myself); rather, it is a harmful and political statement. For example, in Minnesota the narrative justifies elevating violent legacies of colonizers while erasing past and present Indigenous presence in battles over place names at Bde Maka Ska and Historic Fort Snelling at Bdote. Meanwhile, the Board of Regents at the University of Minnesota is unwilling to reckon with the racist histories associated with campus building names. The nostalgic characterization of the Midwest as perpetually white and simplistically rural is not cute or benign—it perpetuates the violence of colonization and racism and should no longer be entertained as the uncritical starting point for the next reflection on America’s heartland.

Continue reading “Let’s Change the Way We Talk About the Midwest”