From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Tue Dec 05 2000 - 16:48:20 MST
At 05:42 PM 12/5/2000 -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>James Rogers wrote,
>>
>>I have to agree with Michael on this part at least. Most rural people
>>will generally give city people the benefit of the doubt if you don't
>>already fall into some category that has a well-deserved reputation for
>>being "no good". Odd or unusual people are usually viewed as a
>>curiosities and are generally dealt with in a friendly manner.
>
>I'm sorry, but I can't buy this as a generalization. When I was in high
>school in rural Illinois, I saw local community members physically attack
>strangers because they were perceived to be gay, black, Mormons, atheists,
>communists, government agents, homeless or foreigners. In my experience,
>many rural people are not very tolerant of those who are different.
I grew up in rural Washington, Nebraska, Idaho, and have spent inordinate
amounts of time in rural Nevada, Minnesota, South Carolina, Missouri, and
so forth. While I stand by my original statement for the most part, on
further reflection I would modify it as follows based on my experience:
There are two different rural cultures in the U.S., which can be roughly
delineated as being east of the Rockies or west of the Rockies. The rural
cultural east of the Rockies tends to be culturally Conservative, whereas
the rural culture west of the Rockies tends to be culturally Libertarian
(with the primary regional exception possibly being parts of Idaho, which
is more Conservative).
If I had to make a quick guess as to why this is, I would give two reasons
as probable major factors. First, it is because the more zealous
Protestant religions (Methodist,Baptist, etc) never took hold out West
since the space was already occupied by an old and established Catholic
presence that seems to have evaporated on its own in recent
history. Second, I believe the West has been much more culturally and
ethnically integrated for much longer than East of the Rockies. Most of
the rural Midwest and South is *still* ethnically homogenous; many rural
areas are populated almost exclusively by groups such as Czechs,
Hungarians, Swedes, Germans, blacks, etc. People in many rural communities
have never even seen an Asian person in the flesh (which was true of where
I lived in Nebraska, a purely Czech town with many quaint concepts of what
everyone else was like). By contrast, Chinese and Mexicans figure
prominently in the histories of States like Nevada and Arizona more than a
century ago, and the different ethnic groups were unusually integrated
culturally for the time, largely out of economic necessity. I think this
is one of the historical reasons behind the "Live and let live" attitude of
the rural West.
To be perfectly honest, I have difficulty stomaching Midwestern and
Southern rural culture on an extended basis, but I can deal with rural
Western culture just fine.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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