I will have people come up to me and ask if I’m a Jew. (And, about half to two-thirds of the time, ask where my horns are under there, or if they can see my tail).
Nothin. I’m just a “white guy”. And that’s not just rednecks that act that way, but also “liberal city folk”. It gets worse when I get a tan with the long hair; then people apparently think I’m a Muslim. Wearing a yamulke or Star Of David is also likely to result in bigotry displays. I think that that falls under @jlw’s “non-WHITE CHRISTIAN” identifiers.
Well all 3. Mean, median and mode are technically averages. In casual usage average tends to refer to mean, but it isn’t wrong to refer to the others as such. And when we talk about income average we almost always mean median, as mean in that case is a useless metric for the reason you cited. Even one billionaire in the set can skew it into inaccurate territory.
As to ecconomicly struggling? Certainly not synonymous with poor. But it’s hard to argue a group that mostly makes more than the national median income is mostly comprised of or driven by those struggling as cracked describes. The national median in the 50’s sits safely higher that the mid 40’s number needed to afford a home or “live comfortably” in our most expensive cities. Transfer that to more affordable collapsing rural and suburban areas, rust belt cities etc and it goes a lot further. The majority of trumps avid backers sit at the national average or higher.
Do large numbers of urban folks really say broad-sweeping bigoted things about rural folks?
Whenever I’m in the country, I hear lots of digs and outright insults against urban folks. The prejudice is mostly subtle, but constant. I’ve never heard anything like that when in the city.
Is this claim really true, or projection, or hyperbole?
In my experience, yes. I’ve certainly experienced it, but mostly from East Coast types who think everything between New York and California is either desolate wasteland or the ghetto (Detroit and Chicago). I’ve had a woman sitting next to me on the plane assume I was a Young Earth Creationist because I said I was from Ohio, and a few other people assume I was Evangelical Christian for the same reason. Mostly, though, it’s people asking me if we have [insert really common thing here] in the Midwest. I would call it more ignorance than bigotry.
It’s more of a general smugness. But a significant portion of the people in our urban and liberal zones are from places neither urban nor liberal. The most direct vitriol about fly over country seems to come from those that had really bad experiences living there as young people. Just watch any given David Cross special.
I’ve noticed a similar thing with the atheist crowd. The most vocal, activist, anti-religion, And angriest atheists are often those that had the worst personal experience with a religious upbringing.
In my experience, yes. But to be fair, I have also heard country folk talk smack on city slickers.
I think whether or not you hear these things might depend on how you yourself dress, talk and act. Since I change my stripes pretty constantly I might hear more than others; I’m equally likely to wear dung-spattered cowboy boots and jeans, spiked black leathers and a mohawk, or worsted wool and wire-rims, and I shift my accent and vocabulary to fit the environment.
Yeah I chose not to reply to you. You’re new here and I’m still not convinced you’re acting in good faith, nothing in your comment addresses what I wrote. So I’ve bowed out of our conversation.
Right, but it’s a different dynamic if it’s a Midwestern transplant on the East Coast talking smack about flyover country than it is if it’s some old money prep school kid from New England. I have no problem with people hating on flyover country, unless it’s people who have never lived there and maybe have never even been there. It’s the difference between “I hated living in XYZ” and “I’m better than you because you’re from XYZ”.
Having lived in both sorts of areas throughout the north east. And spent plenty of time in rural points south. You hear a lot more, And a lot nastier attacks on “city people” and liberals from that quarter than in the other direction. In my own home town I am frequently attacked as a city boy, “cityot” or what have. And dressed down. Simply because I have an education and don’t dress like a combination farmer and parrot head. A lot of it is tinged with racism. Like all the times I’ve heard that “Jew york” should be nuked off the face of the earth. A poor plan coming from a fisherman who lives just 80 miles from Manhattan. Or the sheer volume of NY and New England residents I run into proudly waving the confederate flag.
Right. But even though I’ve heard some dumb shit about the south and Midwest out of NYC and Philly natives it tends not to be of the “Minnesota is a shit hole and we aughta burn that shit to the ground” variety. I have heard southerners and Midwesterner say that about where they’re from. But only the ones who had a really rough time of it.
You hear that rather constantly out of. Well everyone but Midwesterners. About New York and the East Coast. And worse.
By “in the city” do you mean Chicago? Your question prompted a thought that probably won’t hold up under scrutiny but maybe it’s partly geography. I live in a good-sized and pretty diverse city but in the South. Rural areas are just a few miles away in any direction. And I don’t hear a lot of criticism or jokes about rural people, possibly because even people who live in the city either have a rural background or are connected to someone who does.
Nashville is much smaller than Chicago but there seems to be some similarity: Chicago is also surrounded by rural areas, or seems to be.
Of course it’s got to be a gross oversimplification to say that people who live in very large urban centers are in a kind of bubble.
I really can’t explain Midwestern niceness. I guess it started off as a desire to not ruffle feathers but then morphed into weapons grade passive aggression. Indiana is an exception to this IME, and I’m not sure why.
The farmer’s daughter thing is probably related to stereotypes about Germans and Scandinavians. There’s a similar generalization about men, but less so.
I think the niceness is a combination of genuinely being nicer than elsewhere and the whole etiquette thing. If youre nice you show it and if you aren’t you still act as if you are. New Yorkers are famously gruff and often downright rude. But they’re pretty fedementally nice. Few places I’ve been are more willing to offer directions, genuine advice etc. But it will be blunt and probably unasked for. Southerners? Well more often than not that famous southern hospitality is purely about etiquette. Pleasantries masking a seething suspicion.
The combination of genuine pleasantness and manners is enough of a rarity for some to be unnerving.
Eta: if the New Yorker wants you to Fuck off they tell you to Fuck off. If the southerner wants you to Fuck off they tell you “y’all come back”. The Midwesterner doesn’t want you to Fuck off, And if they did they wouldn’t say anything.
