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Jun. 3rd, 2004
I just can't do it
Jun. 3rd, 2004 08:27 amI know I promised that I would deliver a post filled with generalizations and assumptions about Midwesterners based on spending four days in one liberal Midwest city. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. Not only do I have an aversion to picking on underdogs, but I think it brings out the worst qualities I have as a Californian: arrogance, elitism and know-it-allness.
The whole idea started as a joke anyway. I noticed that Midwest friends living in the Bay Area would often comment about the strange ways of my people who they now lived amongst. To turn it back on them, I sometimes talk about how exotic the Midwest is to me. Because it is. I’ve never really lived there* and the cultural differences are as strange to me as they are to them.
I’ve had a theory, not overturned by my first actual visit,** that Midwesterners really don’t believe that people who live elsewhere don’t already know everything about them. Showing interest in their ways was greeted with defensiveness, the waiting to be the punch line in a mean, elitist joke. Walking down the street with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
walktheplank as anarqueso and I did our California blurting thing, I could feel him bristle a little but he wasn’t the only one. Really, we don’t have that much brick here. It is something notable to those of us brought up in a culture of timber and earthquakes.
Though I’ve spent years being exotified as a Californian from people who moved here from elsewhere, I understand the feeling of being out of place and bonding with others about it. When I lived in upstate NY I did the same things, seeking out Californians I never would have befriended at home just to make the first months a little more bearable and familiar. I’ll never forgot someone I met at college saying in exasperation, "They don’t even know what the CYA* is" as if there was any reason the Easterners should.
There’s something there in the relations of Midwesters to Coastal folks that is interesting, but I’m not smart enough to figure it out yet without falling into stereotypes and ignoring other societal factors. I do know that almost all the Midwest-raised people I talked to about this in the last couple of days had a hard time talking about it without getting defensive and I had a hard time finding the words that would make that discussion easier.
*Technically, this is a lie. I was born in the Midwest and lived there for two years before becoming a Californian. My parents were from the East Coast, living in Michigan for a few years when I was born.
**It actually wasn’t my first visit. I’ve driven cross country 5 times. But I never had local contacts and people to hang out with there before.
***California Youth Authority. We were talking about her friends back home and why she moved 3000 miles for school. There was a class component to this social anxiety also but I’m leaving that aside for now.
The whole idea started as a joke anyway. I noticed that Midwest friends living in the Bay Area would often comment about the strange ways of my people who they now lived amongst. To turn it back on them, I sometimes talk about how exotic the Midwest is to me. Because it is. I’ve never really lived there* and the cultural differences are as strange to me as they are to them.
I’ve had a theory, not overturned by my first actual visit,** that Midwesterners really don’t believe that people who live elsewhere don’t already know everything about them. Showing interest in their ways was greeted with defensiveness, the waiting to be the punch line in a mean, elitist joke. Walking down the street with
walktheplank as anarqueso and I did our California blurting thing, I could feel him bristle a little but he wasn’t the only one. Really, we don’t have that much brick here. It is something notable to those of us brought up in a culture of timber and earthquakes.Though I’ve spent years being exotified as a Californian from people who moved here from elsewhere, I understand the feeling of being out of place and bonding with others about it. When I lived in upstate NY I did the same things, seeking out Californians I never would have befriended at home just to make the first months a little more bearable and familiar. I’ll never forgot someone I met at college saying in exasperation, "They don’t even know what the CYA* is" as if there was any reason the Easterners should.
There’s something there in the relations of Midwesters to Coastal folks that is interesting, but I’m not smart enough to figure it out yet without falling into stereotypes and ignoring other societal factors. I do know that almost all the Midwest-raised people I talked to about this in the last couple of days had a hard time talking about it without getting defensive and I had a hard time finding the words that would make that discussion easier.
*Technically, this is a lie. I was born in the Midwest and lived there for two years before becoming a Californian. My parents were from the East Coast, living in Michigan for a few years when I was born.
**It actually wasn’t my first visit. I’ve driven cross country 5 times. But I never had local contacts and people to hang out with there before.
***California Youth Authority. We were talking about her friends back home and why she moved 3000 miles for school. There was a class component to this social anxiety also but I’m leaving that aside for now.