10
Apr 09The conservative, civil midwest.
Steven Thrasher’s excellent op-ed in the NYT from a few days back got at the heart of “‘conservative’ Iowa”:
In 1958, when my mother, who was white, and father, who was black, wanted to get married in Nebraska, it was illegal for them to wed. So they decided to go next door to Iowa, a state that was progressive enough to allow interracial marriage.
[...]
[O]ver the years, I’ve met so many gay émigrés who felt it was unsafe to be gay in so-called flyover country and fled for the East and West coasts. But as a gay man, I can’t marry in “liberal” New York, where I’m a resident, or in “liberal” California, where I was born, and very soon I will have that right in “conservative” Iowa.
The dissent is also largely more measured and sober than, say, this. Governor Culver personally disapproves of gay marriage but will respect the Supreme Court’s decision. He has bigger problems to deal with, but did make sure to caution against “name-calling or fear-mongering.”
Or as my fellow Korean-American, defiantly Midwestern friend Scott puts it, with no trace of irony:
To all the coastal bitches at Beloit [College, our alma mater] who complained about moving to the midwest, void of culture and tolerance: Eat shit and die.
For whatever it’s worth, I do think there’s less palpable racial tension in Iowa than most other places I’ve hung around (Due in large part, I’m sure, to the fact that there are only about 125,000 non-whites in the entire state). Still, I’ve encountered far more unabashed, hostile racism in Chicago and Baltimore than in backwater Cedar Rapids. Maybe they’re just meaner cities, where people don’t bother hiding their animosity.
Tagged: civil liberty, news, politics
April 14th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Part of it is experience, i guess–in places like where i grew up, there just weren’t enough minorities around to form a lot of negative prejudice. more stereotyping, less hostility.