Written by Marianne Mansfield
There’s there, and there’s here.
Soon, I will board an airplane and head to the Midwest. I was born in Indiana, went to college in Ohio, and lived for more than 30 years in Michigan. I’m a Midwesterner, and I have the nasal twang to prove it.
I moved to St. George four years ago. It took me varying amounts of time to acclimate to the peculiarities of this part of the country.
The influence of the majority religion smacked me in the face the first time I tried to buy a bottle of wine on July 24 (for those of you who don’t live here, Pioneer Day is a statewide holiday celebrating the Mormon settlement of Utah. Everything is closed.) Its pervasiveness still catches me, when I encounter it, even though I’ve long since lost the element of surprise. Mostly.
The heat sometimes makes me think I’ve opened the door to a blast furnace, rather than my front porch. Yet, I find I now subscribe to the local wisdom that anything less than 100 degrees is bearable with a bit of forethought. In Michigan, there were days in the winter when we didn’t venture out until high noon, if at all. Here, I’ve learned that errands are to be run in the early morning or after dark in the summer.
What I’m less sure about are the enigmatic cultural biases exerted on people by the region of the country in which they live. Only by leaving a place for a while can one test how far certain mindsets have spread. Are they homegrown and local, or have they set up shop in other parts of America?
What will I find when my plane touches down in the Eastern time zone? Will I find that the ethos with which my thinking largely aligned four years ago, the disposition with which I evaluated everything new I encountered in St. George, is alive and well? Or will people in Michigan share some of the biases I have discovered in my four-year stay, and find troublesome?
Life in the West has caused me to hear things differently. I’m more attuned to code phrases; “Defenders of the Constitution,” for instance. It sounds admirable in theory, but I’ve learned to listen for the essential core, which is what part of the Constitution the speaker feels compelled to defend. I’ve found it is most often the implied “right” for individuals or groups who are not usually armed to bear arms, like teachers and youth.
“States’ rights” is another code phrase. It often appears in print, coupled with the phrase “federal encroachment.” It seems that the true intent is to signal an action or ruling of the federal government with which locals don’t feel the need to comply; land usage comes to mind.
And finally, one of my favorites is “traditional family values,” which is often a tip-off, I’ve found, for rather thinly veiled homophobia.
The question for me, however, is: How widespread have these regional biases become in my four years here? Are people elsewhere expressing the same thoughts?
I’ve found the best way to discover the answers to such questions is to eavesdrop, preferably in diners or taverns, but sometimes a local market or clothing store can become an appropriate research lab. I’m good at eavesdropping — I keep my eyes fixed on my salad or glass of wine, but my ears are finely honed instruments, trained to catch bits of conversation from nearby patrons.
So, if I were a gambling person, here’s where I’d place my money: I think the “Defenders of the Constitution” will crop up in the Midwest (thank you, Tea Party and Fox News). I think the specific parts which are being allegedly defended may vary, but I believe the rush to interpret what the Founding Fathers had in mind is inescapable.
I’ll bet cold, hard cash the “states’ rights” issue is more evident here in the West, where open spaces are such an integral part of the cultural and physical landscape. Although there are wide swaths of forest in Michigan that are unpopulated, the issue of their control and governance was settled long ago. It’s not a front-burner issue there, as it is here.
Finally, I’m going out on a limb to say that the issue of same-sex marriage stirs as much debate here as there. I think the noise about it is diminishing across our country, the actions of Gov. Herbert and AG Reyes notwithstanding.
A dear friend of mine postulates that, politics aside, no meaningful change will occur in this country until we start having the right conversation, those that begin with the acknowledgment that biases are nothing more than one group of people trying to keep something of value they possess from the rest of us. Evaluating the biases above, I know she’s onto something. And unfortunately, that sort of greed can crop up anywhere.
I’ll keep you posted.
