In which our reporter travels to the interior of “Indiana.” The people there, known as “Hoosiers,” call this a “farm.”
The Wall Street Journal has a good article by Michael Phillips about a woman who escaped Fountain County to go work in San Francisco then came back and reflected upon the differences between the places. It’s good in the sense that it’s well written and worth reading. I am frustrated by the genre, however.
There seem to be an abundance of newspaper articles and magazine features about indifferent coastal elites are who are too dismissive of flyover country and that’s how Donald Trump got elected. Too often, these pieces seem to be patronizing inasmuch as they do not examine the underpinnings of Trump country’s feelings and hold the people there to an expectation that their opinions be founded on facts that are more or less correct and their resentments directed in more or less the proper directions.
The pieces generally seem critical of big city types for being too dismissive of rural and Midwestern populations. They are less often critical of rural types for being too dismissive of big city types. The onus is on the urban populations to bridge the gap. I don’t think I’ve seen any pieces on the conservative, rural person from Trump country who goes into the city and discovers that city-people have value and that they have reasons for being fearful of Trump and supportive of the Democrats. And, I think the reason for that is, somewhat ironically, a condescending view of the mental and emotional capacity of red state and rural citizens. As if they are children and, therefore, we shouldn’t hold them to an adult’s standard of behavior.
For example, there is not much push back against rural voters who express sentiments such as:
The wife of her father’s best friend suggested Ms. Cronkhite wasn’t welcome back in farm country.
“We are too busy anyway working our asses off for 12-16 hours every day to feed you ‘coastal’ people and everyone else in this world and I know this may come as a surprise to you, but that even includes Blacks, LGBTs, Muslims, Women and on and on,” wrote Jahn Songer. She and her husband own a local bank, farm corn and soybeans and run a crop-dusting service.
“So keep your elitists’ rear ends in your little office cubicles while we handle the tough, physical things that keep you and your perfect friends alive,” Ms. Songer wrote.
As if it’s reasonable to think that people who do jobs in cities aren’t doing real, hard work. As if the mental work done in offices is less valuable than jobs with physical components. But the writers in these rural-America-as-undiscovered-country pieces seem content to give people like Ms. Songer a pass on opinions like this as if she’s from some benighted tribe who can’t be expected to know that the sun isn’t really swallowed up by a dragon every night.
Just an aside about the rural counties in this part of Indiana. I used to do a lot of collections work which would take me to the counties within a 60 mile radius of Lafayette. By the nature of collections, I was always dealing with poor, financially stressed individuals. And, other than maybe Tippecanoe County itself, these were fairly rural counties. Despite this commonality, there was often a different vibe from county-to-county. The way the process works, after you get a judgment, if the judgment isn’t paid, you drag people into court to testify about their income and assets and see if you can work out some kind of payment plan.
In Benton and White counties, for example, the people who couldn’t pay were generally fairly positive and polite. They didn’t have much money. I’m positive a fair number of them lied to me to one extent or another to keep some income, assets, or cash beyond the reach of my clients. But they were genial about it. In, say, Fountain or Clinton counties, there was more of an angry edge to the encounters. And this wasn’t based on just a couple of encounters. I went to these counties several times per year from 2000 – 2010. I never really figured out why the people in some of these counties were generally positive while other people were generally negative. But there seemed to be some sort of contagious cultural negativity or cultural positivity from area to area which would fester or bloom as the case may be. Like I said, just an aside. I’m not sure if my anecdotal sense of this could be quantified in any real way.
To the larger point of this particular article, I’d like to see a counterbalance of articles wherein rural Americans go to the big city and find out that they’ve been too dismissive of city folks rather than just these anthropological pieces where city people go into the dark interior of America and Learn Lessons.
An excellent article. I have been aware of this issue for quite awhile. My thoughts run in this vein :: The “sister county” approach between the urban counties of the state and the rural counties, making sure to include every village in the counties as well as the county seats. And have them get acquainted.
We’ve had a ‘sister city” program between cities here with cities in other countries, and the same kind of thing could work this way. Something to heal this divide MUST happen, if for no other reason than to put an end to what England once called the “rotten boroughs” — villages that no longer had but a few people having a member of the House of Commons, while cities like Manchester and Birmingham had none.
Who runs it? This would be ideal for a United Way or a service club to administer.
I’m a guy who grew up in a very small town then moved far away from home. I work with “coastal elites”, but I’ve never stopped working with farmers. Some of this article resonates, but I think that the divide is much more complex than it’s generally presented as being. Race and class play a huge part.
I agree it’s nuanced and complicated. I think folks from flyover country should be pressed closely when they characterize coastal people as “elites” just as folks from the coasts should be pressed when they characterize people from the interior as rubes. A double standard where the latter is criticized while the former is shrugged off because they don’t know any better is patronizing.
Race is and always have been a driver of this divide. I couldn’t get past the paywall, so I am little limited in comment. Being from rural Indiana I grew up with this divide between cities and rural areas. In 1915 sociologist E.A. Ross declared that small Midwestern towns reminded him of “fished out ponds populated chiefly by bullheads and suckers.” Ms Songer, thank you for your elegant seld-identification.
fwiw, one more thing. When 9/11 happened, a New York Times reporter happened to be in Crawfordsville on another matter. But, of course he went scouting for reaction from some of the citizens — and boy, did he find out what “we” thought. A lady from one of the more rightwing churches said that NYC deserved what they got and hoped it would cause them to repent. She was not alone in her thinking by any means.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-a-divided-nation-of-big-cities-and-small-towns-caity-cronkhite-thought-she-knew-where-she-belonged-1513352379?mod=e2fb here is the link
https://www.facebook.com/wsj/posts/10157058089978128 Lets try this one.
The facebook link does work. Just read the article and having grown up in a small town it is normal for the people that live there to have a chip on their shoulder. I agree that things are way more complicated then people know.
I was in line at Fry’s talking to a man who was a professional painter and was upset that illegal immigrants were under bidding him for painting jobs. How it works is a boss (white, black or legal alien) hires illegals and then they under bid this gentlemen for a painting job. He states he will not break the law and hire illegals. He voted for Trump and feels he was played by him and the Republican party. He says he is making it but working two times harder then he used to.
As for small towns the people that stay are getting by working jobs that pay just above minimum wage and sometimes work two jobs to get by. What holds these towns together is the schools, hospitals and government jobs. There is a lot of welfare and disability recipients and occasional small business and farmers that holds these towns together.
I witnessed a white trash party on Facebook by some college students from the University in Franklin Indiana. So social racism is alive and well in the big cities and the well to do students in small town Universities.
+1.
Thanks for sharing the article, interesting read and insight.
https://www.facebook.com/wsj/posts/10157058089978128 Carlito this link works.