One of the many whirlwinds of social media Wednesday morning centered on a series of tweets from Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times.
In the tweets, which have since been deleted, Weisman responded to Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, who shared a video with former Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., saying “free stuff from the government doesn't play well in the Midwest.” . Shahid noted that Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., were both from the Midwest and both supported health care expansions that McCaskill opposed.
“Saying @RashidaTlaib (D-Detroit) and @IlhanMN (D-Minneapolis) are from the Midwest is like saying @RepLloydDoggett (D-Austin) is from Texas or @repjohnlewis (D -Atlanta) is from the Deep South,” he wrote, using the politicians' Twitter handles. “Come”.
Later he added that “the [political] message my fan loves in Lake Harriet” — an area of Minneapolis — “doesn't work with my in-laws in Plymouth and Shoreview, two suburbs.
One advantage of social media is that it doesn't take long for a message to get a response. In short, Weisman's determination that big city dwellers were not considered “real” members of regions such as the Midwest, the Deep South, or Texas was not without abuse. He later deleted the tweets because, he said, “I didn't express my point sufficiently.”
Or maybe – even unintentionally?
Analysis of Weisman's claims is complicated by the fact that, except for Texas, the boundaries of the “Midwest” and “South” are not well defined. FiveThirtyEight asked readers to weigh in on each, finding that opinions on which states should or shouldn't be included vary widely. The Midwest is generally centered around Illinois. the Deep South around Alabama;
However, this ambiguity is important for our purposes. References to the “Midwest” are references to this idea of what “the Midwest” is. Farm. John Deere Hats. In places, massive, empty factories. The same is true of the “Deep South,” though here the allusions are magnolia trees heavy with Spanish moss. Texas is long, cold beers and dirty trucks.
To claim that a resident of Detroit or Minneapolis is not part of the “Midwest” means that the cities are not part of that vague, sketchy sense of what “the region is.” In other words, it begs the question: “The Midwest” is this thing that has nothing to do with cities. Therefore, people from the cities are not part of the “Midwest”.
We blur these lines between the concepts of places and the places themselves all the time. Any resident of the District of Columbia understands that DC is not the DC of TV and movies. References to things happening in DC are not generally references to things happening in neighborhoods. The result of this, of course, is that the parts of DC that are not part of the federal government DC are often hidden or ignored.
The same goes for the Midwest. When we talk about the Midwest in a political context, we generally talk about farms and unemployed auto workers. We're not talking about Chicago in general. When we talk about Youngstown, Ohio, we're referring to those often white workers, not the city's large black population. We mean that concept – a concept that doesn't really explain the complexity of the region.
Weisman's tweet made it clear how we are relegating anyone outside of this idea to the background. By applying the names of these cities to Democratic officials, he was clear that these people don't fit how the political media talks about these places. The problem, of course, isn't that they shouldn't match—what Weisman claimed. The problem is that descriptors are lousy shorthand.
So if we're going to really evaluate who belongs and who doesn't belong in these areas, let's look at some numbers. Let's say the Midwest includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. For the Deep South, let's include Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Texas, as always, is Texas.
In these Midwestern states, more than three-quarters of residents in 2010 lived in urban or suburban areas. In the Deep South, more than two-thirds did. And in Texas? Over 80 percent. In other words, in no region does the majority of the population live in rural areas.
This uses the Census Bureau definitions, which are a little rough. So let's look at it another way: How much of the population of these states and territories live in large cities, cities with a population of 100,000 or more? In the Midwest, 1 in 5 residents live in one of its 40 major cities—a percentage boosted not least by Chicago. In the Deep South, about 1 in 8. In Texas? Almost half.
Even here, “big city” is a bit broad. My father lives in a town of about 200,000 outside of Dallas, a town anchored by a courthouse and a town square. Cities can spread outward and cover a large area, making even “city” a concept that defies easy characterization.
It is important to note how race overlaps with urbanism. Most of these states are majority white (meaning non-Hispanic white here). But in every state and every region, the density of non-white residents is greater in urban areas than in non-urban areas.
That's not surprising either. We know that cities tend to be more diverse. But when we equate the real Midwest with our perception of the Midwest, we necessarily exclude more non-white residents from the conversation. That's the case with Youngstown. And it's what Weisman's tweet specifically did to the elected officials he singled out.
Weisman's remark that he had not made his point sufficiently suggests the fact that he did make a good point about our political conversation. There is a valid point about how Democrats appeal to a broad, diverse national party as opposed to more homogenous states. It's a topic I covered earlier this month.
For the record, McCaskill's view is also wrong. The Midwest is more than happy to accept free stuff from the government, as Department of Agriculture data compiled by the Environmental Working Group makes clear.
McCaskill falls into the same trap as Weisman. Agricultural subsidies are not donations. free health care or university education is. People in the “Midwest” like the former and not the latter because people in the “Midwest” are white and Republican and approve of the farm subsidy but not health insurance. It's self-fulfilling again: Democrats can't embrace programs the “Midwest” doesn't like, but what the “Midwest” doesn't like generally overlaps with what Republicans don't like. Democrats, then. . . can't they do things the Republicans don't like?
That's also the game President Donald Trump played earlier this month when his administration proposed cutting food stamp use by $15 billion, but Trump himself celebrated a $16 billion bailout for farmers. One is good and important for the “Midwest”. The other is used by people in places like Chicago or Youngstown, not in the “Midwest.”
These abbreviations we use in politics are important. But when we ourselves – that is, we in the media or elected officials – do not understand where they fall short, we have a significant problem.
Philip Babb is a Washington Post correspondent based in New York.
