Quote:
Originally Posted by Drolefille
The way you worded this implies that the only areas that are (C)conservative in the Midwest are the poor/uneducated ones.
The Midwest is in many ways as conservative as the South, however the large urban areas like Chicago and St. Louis are much more liberal. Illinois is only a "blue state" because of Chicago, and Missouri can go back and forth depending on the issues. However, Central and Southern Illinois are not uneducated and poor. If anything the education is, on a whole, better than that of poor inner city schools.
Not to say that there aren't bad schools and uneducated people around here, but rural doesn't equal poor and uneducated, it just means you combine school districts and drive a bit further. Ohio hardly counts as the midwest in the first place, so don't speak like you know it if you're going to get it wrong.
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Interesting, because after being born and raised in the Lou, I wouldn't call it midwest (we considered ourselves borderline south,) a large urban city, nor liberal (racism is and has always benn rampant.) It always seems to be two steps behing the rest of the country.
As for Southern Illinois, when I attended SIUC in the 60s-70s, Carbondale had some of the poorest areas I had ever seen--including all the homes in the "regular" neighborhoods still having out-houses. Having been there recently, the non-poor consists of the faculty and admin of SIUC, but the town itself is still behind the times. The same with Central IL, because of the U of I. In other words those areas only have a modicum of progressiveness because of the universities that exist there. The locals/natives are a totally different story.
Oh and folx I know in OH--mainly Cleveland do consider themselves to be midwest--as does Delta, which has them in our Midwest region. BTW, MO is not in our midwest region--IL yes, but not MO. The MS River is the divider.