<p>In the Midwest rural town where I attended college, everyone of the locals who weren’t inclined to openly regard college students like myself as “radical deviant pinko commies”* tended to greet you in a warmly and friendly manner and expect a response in kind. </p>
<p>While I had no issues responding in kind as I love to chat friendly people up…including complete strangers, it’s something a lot of NE urban classmates had a hard time adjusting to as they’re either not used to that or worse, tended to regard such behaviors as those from odd weirdos to be regarded with caution based on previous experiences. </p>
<p>I will grant you there is an element of fakeness as this was accompanied by negative behaviors such as drive-by catcalling of female classmates<strong>, drive-by racist taunts</strong>*, being rudely interrupted by a presumptuous local who felt he had the right to dictate what language I was allowed to converse in on a public street, and some locals openly staring at inter-racial dating couples. </p>
<ul>
<li>Town-gown relations were very poor when I attended partially because there was a wide political and cultural differences between the locals (Mostly conservative with some inclination towards racist, sexist, and homophobic taunts/actions) and the student body(Mostly radical lefty politically, had no tolerance for those actions by local ne’er do wells & won’t suffer them gladly, and from the coasts & Chicago).<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Witnessed one of these firsthand while hanging out in a group with some female classmates early freshman year. We tried reporting it, but little came of it. </p>
<p>*** Experienced this firsthand and even got challenged to a fight which was interrupted when the belligerent ne’er do well noticed a cop car coming up behind him in the distance and decided to drive off. </p>
<p>This is stupid. The midwest is a lot bigger than Michigan. Both Minnesota and Illinois are doing very well right now. Wisconsin not so much because of our governor’s naked ambition that is leading to short-sighted decisions affecting everybody negatively (turning down high-speed rail, turning down Medicaid expansion, creating an unstable business climate by attacking teachers and other unionized workers). </p>
<p>Right. “The Midwest” encompasses major metropolitan areas where life is largely indistinguishable from the East Coast, and smaller / more rural areas. There’s no such unified thing as “the Midwest.” (By the same token, what does rural NH or Maine have in common culturally with Long Island?) </p>
<p>You have probably heard of “Minnesota nice.” I do think people are kind and friendly in the midwest, but they can be passive aggressive too. I especially notice it in the work place. (I am from the east coast but have lived in the midwest for 30+ years.)</p>
<p>I do think people in general are more modest and considerate here…not always putting themselves first. But I also find them provincial sometimes. It astonishes me how many people I know have never been to New York or California, let alone out of the country. And I am not talking about people who couldn’t afford to travel. They just don’t want to.</p>
<p>" will grant you there is an element of fakeness as this was accompanied by negative behaviors such as drive-by catcalling of female classmates<strong>, drive-by racist taunts</strong>*, being rudely interrupted by a presumptuous local who felt he had the right to dictate what language I was allowed to converse in on a public street, and some locals openly staring at inter-racial dating couples."</p>
<p>You’ve talked about the local who chastised you for speaking Chinese umpteen times on these boards and you seem to have extrapolated a heck of a lot from one-person-who-was-a-jerk, though jerks are found everywhere. It doesn’t mean that there was an element of “fakeness” in the other people in these times who greeted you warmly and chatted you up. It just means that there are different people, just like everywhere. </p>
<p>With a few exceptions, most of Long Island is suburban in feel, not rural as one would find in genuinely rural parts of NH and Maine. A better comparison would be between NH/Maine with rural upstate NY or Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>That’s it! I think this is the difference I was going for. Midwest is friendly. We look strangers in the eye, greet them. My East Coast students often remark, “It’s weird. Everyone here is so . . . nice.” (Like there’s something wrong with that). If you’re not used to it, it probably does seem “fake.”</p>
<p>Agree about the South being so polite, too. My students from the south, and for some reason, especially the men, are the politest bunch of people I’ve ever encountered.</p>
<p>(Of course I know that there is a quite a bit of variance between individuals.)</p>
<p>A common joking remark I heard from relatives in Mississippi or friends who attended college in southern states:</p>
<p>Yes, some southerners are very polite…so long as one doesn’t bring up the fact the Confederacy lost the Civil War or play the tune “Jeff in Petticoats”. </p>
<p>I disagree. People in the midwest, even in the big cities, are just generally nicer than in the East Coast. The difference is palpable. If you are from the midwest, there is no reason to go to the east coast for their public schools. Public schools in the midwest are better anyway.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - (re: your comment about sometimes Midwest or Southern “friendliness” seeming a bit fake…) </p>
<p>I think that is SO interesting! : ) I know two sisters from Europe who each spent a year in the Midwest in the late 70’s, and they both thought that the traditional Midwestern friendliness was very fake!! At first, I didn’t understand what they meant. As an example of “fakeness”, they described a situation where someone would be cleaning house, and if a friend dropped by and wanted to visit, the cleaning Midwesterner would drop everything, greet their friend warmly and invite them in for coffee (even if it was very inconvenient because they needed to get the house cleaned). </p>
<p>After hearing their story, I agreed with their description of “fakeness”, though - I thought inviting someone in when it wasn’t a convenient time was just fake, not friendly. : ) And funnily enough, I sometimes perceive southern friendliness as insincere. Maybe wherever we grow up just feels more “normal” to us, and anything different just feels slightly “off”? : )</p>
<p>I grew up in the South and have lived in the Midwest for over 30 years. Culturally I think the two areas are similar - often, Midwesterners remind me of Southerners without the drawl. I don’t think that Southerners are any more “fake” than other people, especially nowadays; honestly, I think the Southern politeness has diminished greatly, compared to the Old Days. These young whippersnappers and their new-fangled manners! </p>
<p>However, whenever we have these conversations on CC, I wonder if the comparison isn’t so much Midwesterner/ Easterner as it is rural/urban. I grew up in the rural South (think Mayberry, only with a darker underside), and I always thought that my relatives in the urban South were less friendly and less neighborly.</p>
<p>I don’t think of it as Midwesterners as being friendlier. I think of it mostly of the absence of being a jerk or at least knowing that acting like a jerk is bad.</p>
<p>But strangers can and often do care, and life is so much more pleasant when people are friendly to one another. Southerners frequently complain that when they go up North people are rude. Generally, though, I’ve found that when I’m nice and friendly to people they respond in kind, no matter what part of the country, or what country, I’m in, so that is what I do wherever I go. Just recently, on a vacation, one of my children and I went up to a older man who needed help in a restaurant. He was lonely, so we sat down to talk to him. By the time we left, we’d heard his life story, including some very sad things. Our eyes were brimming with tears and we DID care about him, even though he was a stranger.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Oh, we rarely bless the heart of someone we’re mad at, and never to the person directly. “Bless her/his heart” usually means “He/she is so sweet” and most often refers to someone who’s old, sick, or a child. It all depends on what follows or precedes those words. For example, “Bless her heart, she’s not blessed with good sense” means “She’s a really sweet person, but she’s not smart.” It softens the “not smart” with an endearment. “He lives by himself, bless his heart” probably means he’s either a) an old man everyone tries to help, or b) a bit strange but likeable. Once in a while “bless his/her heart” can be a form of disapproval that is quite cutting, but usually it’s a statement of affection.</p>
<p>" But strangers can and often do care, and life is so much more pleasant when people are friendly to one another. Southerners frequently complain that when they go up North people are rude."</p>
<p>I think this is a pace-of-life issue. When I’m out running errands, I certainly appreciate please, thank you and other pleasantries, but the biggest kindness the cashier can give me is to ring me up quickly and efficiently so I can move on with my day, not pretend she’s my new BFF.</p>
<p>Hahahahahaa! THAT was it Pizzagirl! When I was adamantly agreeing with your every word on a different thread recently I was trying to remember what it was that I had adamantly disagreed with you about a couple years ago. That was it . . . chatty check out clerks. :)) We have come full circle.</p>
<p>I’m a born-and-bred New Yorker (daughter of a to-the-core Brooklynite, raised in the suburbs, attending high school in Manhattan, with some of my closest friends from Brooklyn and Queens, etc etc etc) and I know that if I were plunked down in the Midwest as it’s been described, I would feel really odd and probably a bit stifled. I’d probably agree with the whole thing about it seeming put on.
I think that I’m naturally just as nice as any Southerner or Midwesterner, though :)- it’s just that circumstances mean that the culture of friendliness that might have the chance to grow in small towns is kind of killed in the bud around here. If you said good morning to everyone you met on the street in Manhattan or even in some parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx (and I know some Midwesterners who do so in their hometowns and are aghast that I don’t do that in the city) you would lose your voice after three blocks- there are just so many people that it’s impractical to think you’re going to have some kind of a friendship with everyone. You don’t really have a lot of small talk at the neighborhood bodega because there are five people behind you in line who are late for their high-powered Wall Street jobs and who will give you the evil eye if you take up too much of their precious time. You have three hundred people in your high-rise apartment building, and you have to lock your doors at night because of crime . You may never really meet the people in the apartment below you. When you’re living in the middle of so many millions of people, sometimes the best way to avoid feeling stifled is simply to pretend others are the scenery and to make yourself a kind of a bubble- and that attitude after a while filters into the suburbs because, after all, half the men around here commute into NYC. You’re surrounded by thirty people in the tiny, smelly subway car who you may never see again- and the same on the next train, and on the bus, and on the street; it just feels easier to keep to yourself and count the stops til you get off. The homeless man on the corner is too much like the one on the last corner and the corner before that, and if you gave money to each of them where would you be in the end?
I think you’ve gotten the picture. Ironically, I feel more in the middle of people in my suburb than I do in one of the largest cities in the world. I can pay attention to the people around me because there are just fewer- in NYC they’re an amorphous blob
I’m not proud of that- it could also be a function of my personality- but I also feel that the whole politeness aspect is a function of circumstance more than anything else, a way to kind of adapt to surroundings.
Just a TMI, TL;DR perspective, for what it’s worth…</p>
<p>With respect to the friendliness factor–I think there might be some differences across regions but not enough to make it uncomfortable for a middle class kid from the midwest to attend a state flagship university in the east like the two schools the OP mentions–University of Maryland or University of Delaware.</p>
<p>I grew up in the midwest but have been living on the east coast for a long time (32 years). Most of the differences I see in the way people behave are IMO a function of urban/rural or socio-economic differences rather than geographic differences. </p>
</p>