this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Illinoisan here, Pennsylvania and Idaho need to get their heads checked. I wouldn’t consider anything west of Kansas or east of Ohio(being generous there) as Midwest. Also just about anything south of the Missouri Compromise Line is a southern state, the Midwest is not the home of traitors.
Edit: correct mason Dixon to Missouri compromise
Wait until you see the Confederate flags in PA. Ya know, where the battle of Gettysburg happened. Very much not a southern state. It's wild seeing this shit in my neighborhood.
Confederate flags are in canada and California, it’s just a flag for racists to roleplay with, the confederacy won’t rise again anywhere.
It won't "rise again" but the spirit of it absolutely has resurfaced in other forms, and will continue too so long as a significant number of people in this country identify with white supremacy and abject hatred.
The original KKK were effectively the remnants of the Confederate army + new recruits. And it's continued to find new banners in the generations since.
It very much depends on what you mean when you say "the spirit of it," which I think you have to admit, is open to a lot of interpretation.
So much not a southern state that its bottom border is literally the Mason-Dixon line. Some people are, indeed, whack.
I have seen Confederate battle flags flying on trucks and houses in and around Gettysburg, no less. I get the impression that people are not doing this for historical reenactment purposes...
It's the racism. That's why.
Seriously. I live in the Cleveland area of Ohio. We are geographically closer to Canada than the Mason Dixon. There's still an abundance of hoople heads flying confederate flags.
I saw more Confederate battle flags in Indianapolis than Atlanta. Fuck Indianapolis.
Even worse are the ones I see flying in West Virginia – you know, the state that only exists because its inhabitants didn't want to secede along with the rest of Virginia.
South of the Mason-Dixon Line includes almost half of your own state of Illinois, and multiple other states that remained loyal to the union.
Did you perhaps mean to refer to the 36°30′ parallel that was used in the Missouri Compromise?
Personally I'm more worried about the 3% of Iowa who doesn't consider itself the Midwest.
Yes the Illinois/Missouri/Iowa group could be nothing other than Midwest, I don’t know how those aren’t 100%. We’re the poster children of Midwest
Missouri is pretty Southern culturally, due to all the racism.
Oh I know, I live here, it’s still IN the Midwest though. STL and KC are at least decent cities, the rest of the state is horrible though
St. Louis is actually referred to (by its tourism board, at least) as "The Gateway to The West". So, if it's not mid west, I don't know what they're thinking.
similarly, there's a good chunk of Southern Illinois that is basically indistinguishable from Kentucky.. same for Indiana..
my guess is that the 4.7% of missourians saying no are all in the ozarks/boot heel
Nah, they can’t read
There's a big cultural divide for Illinois, Chicago isn't very "Midwest" compared to downstate.
To say nothing of Idaho... What bunch of fucking morons. The state is one away from the left coast and they're calling themselves "mid" west? Are they actually that stupid? (Yes, rhetorical.)
As someone from Idaho: yea this pretty much tracks
I mean, if we went with what the word should indicate, Idaho is absolutely the Midwest. As it stands, there's no Mid or Mideast, the real "Midwest" is actually just the middle of the country. At this point, "Midwest* has almost nothing to do with relative location, it's more of a social and economic distinction, which Idaho does fit in with imo.
IIRC, the term was founded when "The West" was pretty much everything west of St. Louis, but it's been decades since primary school, so I could be (and often am) mistaken.
That map for the Mason-Dixon Line is not correct. The original line was at that latitude but it ended at modern day West Virginia. It was the line of demarcation between Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware and Maryland. It was used in congressional debate during and after the the Missouri Compromise to refer to the line of division between slave states and free states which lead to an unofficial expansion. Since the 1820s it has been understood to move directly north from it's original endpoint until it hits the Ohio River then to follow the river west to the Mississippi River then to travel along the eastern, northern and western borders of Missouri. It ends on the 36°30' parallel and extends straight west through the Louisiana Purchase. The 36°30' line was applicable in the territories but not among the states. The Mason Dixon was the line of separation among the states.
https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/mason-dixon-line.htm
You are indeed correct, my bad it’s early where I’m at lol
Central Illinoisan here, and I’m pretty sure the half of Illinois south of the Mason-Dixon Line is the South, not the Midwest.
Well, Pittsburgh is culturally midwest even if they aren't geographically so.
it was settled by a lot of the same type of Germans who continued west from there during the mid 19th Century.. and its proximity to Cleveland has always sort of made it the easternmost Midwestern city..
Aside from the Browns/Steelers rivalry, I don’t get why there is so much animosity between people in the two cities. Having lived there for a couple of years after growing up in NEOhio, I miss Pittsburgh, and there’s a lot of commonality to be shared there.
Pittsburgh is geographically midwest as well. The Appalachians were the historical eastern border of the Midwest.
I view Pittsburgh as honorary Midwestern territory. It's a fantastic city, too.
Philly, on the other hand, is culturally... Philly.
We're way too confrontational to be culturally midwest.
Then y’all need to get Ohio to stop giving northern Kentucky Skyline chili if you don’t want them to be somewhat midwestern and southern at the same time. But you damn right about Idaho, culturally they’re closer to Floridian that anything else
I’ve never given Ohio anything other than ridicule lol and Kentucky is southern so them influencing Ohio would be trying to make them southern but they’re bordering Canada so that doesn’t work.
Ohio really just doesn’t fit anywhere well
Pennsylvania does seem to be really far east for anyone to legit think that they're in the Midwest, but I haven't had the pleasure of visiting, yet, and don't know much about the people there. I can offer some perspective on a couple states that aren't exactly Midwest states:
Eastern Colorado is geographically and culturaly indistinguishable from Kansas, so I can see how people living in that area could consider it being the Midwest.
Since Oklahoma, my home state, was mostly just Native American territories it wasn't really part of either side of the civil war and so I think a lot of today's population don't want to be associated with the south and its history. I personally would hate to be called a southerner, but I don't think midwesterner is necessarily the right fit either.
Pennsylvanian here, sorry we have a lot of dumb people.
I once worked with a person from Ohio who thought Ohio was the furthest WEST Midwest state.
Map literacy is hard I guess