Midland: Reports from Flyover Country

INTRODUCTION

A LITTLE LESS THAN FOUR years ago, we thought America might be on the verge of meaningful change. Lasting change. Of course, as it turns out, we were right, but not in the way we envisioned. We don’t know yet whether the changes wrought by Donald Trump’s presidency will be lasting. But one thing that wasn’t surprising, that historic night in November 2016, was the rapidly developing narrative around rural voters. Call them middle class. Call them lower middle class, even. But for many people in communities across this country, even those living at points firmly between Los Angeles and New York, their anger and frustration began to be directed toward flyover country. The uneducated middle. A large swath of this nation’s population feels that another large swath continues to vote against their economic interest.

As two southerners who grew up in racially charged towns far removed from the mainstream media, we know that it’s easy to grasp at stereotypes and generalizations as we try to make sense of the world today. But we also know, personally, that these middle areas are complicated. To wit, we are also professors at a small liberal arts college in central Ohio, surrounded by once-thriving towns, once-thriving family farms, and too many people whose lives have been hollowed out in the last forty years by unchecked capitalism and globalization. This backdrop foretold a story that the polls didn’t. From Columbus to Cleveland, if you traveled Ohio 13, you would have seen that nearly every farm and every house was pro-Trump. In the small college town where we live and work, the houses alternated their allegiances. It may not be the most scientific measurement, but it ultimately proved more illuminating than the pie charts from the pundits.

Which is to say: we were not surprised by Trump’s election. Our neighbors told us—and showed us—what could happen. You can’t boil one group down to anything, but in the wake of Trump’s victory, the Trump Country narrative took hold. The blame was placed squarely on rural communities that are routinely forgotten by the very media now doing the finger-pointing. It did not matter that exit polls showed Clinton won working-class voters but lost college-educated women. Trump and his strength and his tough talk clearly spoke to the little guy, went the narrative.

We all know this now, of course. The writers in this collection knew it then, back in 2015 and early 2016. They knew because they live and work in Trump Country. They have abandoned the media capitals to pursue careers and raise their families in the towns and states they love, that feel like home. They’re interested in getting it right, not because of a journalistic creed, but because they want to show the rest of the country that the struggles of life matter there just as much as anywhere else. And unlike the parachute reporter from one of the two coasts, they have to face their subjects the next day at the grocery store, at the coffee shop, picking the kids up from school.

There has never been a more crucial time for the journalism we seek to highlight in this collection. As our media giants falter and fracture, as our ability to disseminate truth and facts gets drowned out by the compulsive electronic bird call of our president, the stories in this book remind us that elections matter, yes, but also that life still persists and that the human struggle to make meaning of our lives is universal.

HOW THIS BOOK CAME ABOUT

After the election, writer Ted Genoways put out a call—and a challenge, of sorts—on Facebook, to the writers he knew in the Midwest. He asked them to keep reporting, keeping in mind the narrative that was already unfolding about their communities. We were among those listed, and that was the first step toward the book you’re holding. Quickly, Ted’s thread moved from the virtual to an actual event known as the Between Coasts Forums. It first convened in January 2017. Fifty writers from around the Midwest (and a few from the coasts, too) met to discuss how to subvert a mainstream narrative that seemed false from our vantage points, and to discuss the challenges that would pose under an administration that, from its very first day, was routinely lying to the American people.

Those forums have become a sort of professional development conference for us, though less about being seen than about getting to work. A Midwestern ethos pervades, if you like. As the caretakers of the forums, we want to ensure that people who cover underreported communities and places in the middle have a place to gather and to be heard. Esther Honig, a former NPR reporter turned long-form freelancer whose work is featured here, remarked at a recent forum (number five!) in Lincoln, Nebraska, that the reason she feels committed to this group of journalists is that we make it seem cool to not move to New York, Los Angeles, or Washington, D.C. That pretty much sums it up.

At the forums, our students and local documentary filmmakers rub elbows with seasoned journalists like The New Yorker’s Peter Slevin, whose piece on Bernie Sanders and socialism in Wisconsin runs alongside our former student Fitale Wari’s excellent essay on feeling afraid as an African American woman during the Trump presidency. Heather Sinclair Shaw’s piece on a prodigal daughter returning and surprising herself with a run for mayor appears next to Ted Genoways’s own piece about strange bedfellows: environmental activists and white nationalists working side by side in Freemont, Nebraska, to stop a Costco chicken processing plant from opening.

The goal of this book is not just to highlight the excellent reporting by excellent writers that has already appeared in print but, like our forums, to give space and voice to writers whose work has not gained the purchase and audience it deserves. Ultimately, we hope you’ll see that the breadth, talent, and diversity of the Midwest spreads as far as the cornfields, and that the worst thing we could do in this political moment is misjudge or neglect the stories that reside there. Instead, let’s stop to walk around these neighborhoods, to consider their fates along with our own. Their stories are your stories. Their country is ours.

Campaign Trails

DOWN RIVER

Mei-Ling Hopgood

When I was a kid, my hometown of Taylor, Michigan, sat on one of the lowest rungs of the suburban Detroit social hierarchy. We were Down River, southwest of the D, just east of Metro Airport. Outsiders called us (mostly white) trash; we lived in public housing and trailer parks near railroad tracks.

You come from Taylortucky, laughed a scuba instructor I met while traveling in Hawaii. Whenever people ripped us, I liked to think I knew my town so much better than they did.

It was true that generations of poor southern families migrated north in search of jobs at auto plants, settling in Taylor and the surrounding Down River communities. Indeed, back in the 1980s, when I was in middle and high school, we were a burnout-friendly kind of place, and proud of it. At the Get and Go across the street from my high school, teens lingered to smoke. In college, we’d use fake IDs to dance in windowless saloons on weedy lots.

I was always aware of how different I was in Down River. My parents were, in fact, white-collar. My dad, who grew up in Taylor, was president of the Michigan Federation of Teachers, and my mother was an elementary school principal. My childhood friends thought we were rich because my father designed and built our house, which sat on two acres of woods.

Some differences were more painful, and back then, I didn’t talk about them much. Taylor’s population then was mostly white, and about 4 percent black. My parents adopted me from Taiwan and my younger brothers from Korea, and I used to joke that we made up three-fourths of the 1 percent Asians in our city. Once people met my brothers and me, they remembered us, for better or worse. My teachers always recalled our faces, names, and how well we did in school. My ear was tuned to the hisses of ching, chang, chung, and screams of Go back to China! from rusting Ford Mustangs. The signs outside the United Auto Workers parking lots read Made in the USA Only. The signs—and the people who put them up—were talking about cars. But sometimes I wondered if they wanted to keep people like me out.

Over time I have come to believe being raised in a gritty place like Taylor made me tougher and more resilient. Many more people showed me love than hate.

My life there was the springboard from which I leapt into the world, ending up in places as far-flung as Argentina and Taiwan. Great math teachers helped me ace calculus, and my journalism teacher helped me shape a career. I was valedictorian and class president. And union scholarships helped me pay my way through college. Friends from high school eagerly celebrated my success as a writer.

But the thing about racism is that it bleeds onto and stains everything it touches. Those marks change the fabric of who you are and how you view the world, even when you think you have moved on.

When I worked as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press in the 1990s, I lived in Troy, Royal Oak, Ann Arbor—communities where people seemed smarter, richer, and slightly more diverse. Yet people still made fun of where I was from. I lived in different states and countries; built a life, learned languages, evolved how I felt about race, culture, and identity.

Meanwhile, Taylor changed. Most of the people I hung out with moved away. The population dropped from almost 78,000 when I was in high school to an estimated 61,000 in 2019, according to the census. The city’s leaders—including my father, who passed away in 2002—built a more economically diverse city, a nice golf course, and small, new clusters of modern homes on once-vacant lots. Today, the city is 72 percent white, 17 percent black, 5 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent Asian.

When my brother ran for Michigan state representative in the 22nd District in 2002, we wondered whether he would use his real name in his campaign. Could a place like Taylor and neighboring Romulus vote for a guy with a Korean name like Hoon-Yung? He went door-to-door, making his case. In the end, he won, and in 2010 was elected state senator, leaving Lansing only when he was term-limited out.

I was relieved that my town had proved me wrong. I also realized that my own adolescent scars still shaped my perception of Taylor. But as it turns out, the people there really could look at Hoon’s accomplishments and platform instead of his race.

My old assumptions reared their head again when my mom told me, during the run-up to the presidential election of 2016, that people in my hometown of Taylor, Michigan, were going for Trump.

I’m afraid to put up a Hillary sign, she told me. Once upon a time, my parents filled their front yard with neon political signs during election season. But now she feared someone might vandalize her home.

I was surprised at first. I had known our Detroit suburb as a Democratic stronghold, a hard-core union town where people made and bought cars from General Motors and Ford, and voted a straight blue ticket. Then, it occurred to me that Taylor might, in fact, be just the kind of place that would turn to Donald Trump—for those same reasons.

I’d been gritting my teeth as I read my social media feed. I had vowed not to defriend people for views that contrasted with my own. But the discourse—Trump and his supporters’ references to immigrants as criminals, to people of color as irresponsible—struck at the heart of my deepest sensitivities. I’d spent my childhood fearing people thought these things of me, that behind their smiles they judged me as un-American. I filtered others’ political beliefs through my own pain.

Truth be told, in the years before 2016, I paid scant attention to the politics of my home state, let alone Taylor. But on Election Day, I watched as Trump’s percentage of the vote crept upward in many states, including Michigan, and knew he was headed for victory. I watched as Wayne County teetered from Clinton to Trump and was floored. The city of Detroit would eventually turn the county in Clinton’s favor, but Trump won Michigan by just more than 10,000 votes. The state was key to Trump’s presidency.

I was devastated. And I did exactly what I had sworn I wouldn’t do. I lashed out against one of my sweetest friends from my high school days. During those brutal teenage years, Faith had been loving and supportive while others were cruel. She was soft-spoken, always concerned with how you were, patient and kind. But online, she had led an open charge to rally suburban women for Trump, denying accusations of racism. We had not talked in years. In a state of mourning, my one act of retaliation was to defriend Faith.

In that moment, I believed that Trump won in Taylor because Taylor was racist, and therefore anyone who voted for Trump had to be as well.

Since then, I like to think I’ve made my way back to the belief that most people are more complex than their political views. When I looked at Wayne County’s election results, I saw that even though Trump won in 21 out of 31 precincts in Taylor, Clinton won overall. Whenever I’ve posted, during indignant moments, memories of childhood racism, I receive a wash of sympathy from old friends from Taylor.

We had no idea, they say. We are sorry.

How could you not know? I wonder. But during these times, it is easy to cast people in simple terms—even the people you once knew or currently know well. As a journalist, I try to challenge myself to speak in specifics, not to draw generalizations or tar a group for the behavior of an individual. I tell my students at Northwestern University, who tend to be a liberal lot, that during challenging times, we are forced to reexamine what we believe and who we are. I ask them to lean into the things that make them uncomfortable. I like to think I, personally, have leaned away from, or disproved, the stereotypes imposed on me. I have not always done the same for my hometown, the friends who grew up there, and the people who live there now.

I finally looked at Faith’s public Facebook feed the other day. I noticed that one of the posts I can still see is one celebrating the release of my first book a decade ago, at my launch party. I immediately felt embarrassed for jumping to conclusions, without reaching out, asking her why.

I did not try to understand her journey and who she had become.

Still, calling her would mean I would have to confront regret—for labeling, for lashing out, and for losing touch with people who were once dear to me. I’ve not yet found the energy to reach out. I still like to think I will.

THE MANY, TANGLED AMERICAN DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM

Peter Slevin

As Donald Trump declares that America will never be a socialist country and Democratic presidential candidates struggle to put a name to their progressive policies, the historian John Gurda would like to add some perspective to how we think about socialism. The term has been ground into the dust over the years, he told me, when we met in his hometown of Milwaukee, and his aim is to rehabilitate it. Part of my self-assigned role is to provide some of the context, the nuance, where it makes sense again. Because it’s the straw man, it’s the boogeyman for an awful lot of people.

Last year, when the Democratic National Committee chose Milwaukee to host its 2020 convention, the executive director of Wisconsin’s Republican Party mocked the decision, noting that, in the twentieth century, Milwaukee, alone among American cities, had elected three socialist mayors. With the rise of Bernie Sanders and the embrace of socialism by its newest leaders, the American left has come full circle, Mark Jefferson, the head of the party, said. But Gurda, who is seventy-two and has spent nearly all of his years in Milwaukee, thinks that the socialism practiced there deserves another look. The record, he said, reveals a movement calling itself socialist that governed well, that governed frugally, that governed creatively, that served the broader common interest. We abandon that vision at our peril. All this fearmongering about nationalizing industries and taking from the rich—the Robin Hood thing—that’s a gross misrepresentation.

Senator Bernie Sanders, the only avowed socialist in the presidential race, delivered a speech in June of 2019 that presented his brand of democratic socialism as an unthreatening egalitarianism, in the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. He called it the unfinished business of the New Deal and recited an economic bill of rights that included the right to a living wage, health care, a secure retirement, and a clean environment. ‘Socialism,’ Sanders quoted President Harry Truman as saying, in 1952, ‘is the epithet they have hurled at every advance that people have made in the last twenty years. Socialism is what they called Social Security. Socialism is what they called farm-price supports. Socialism is what they called bank-deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor. Socialism is their name for almost everything that helps all of the people.’

More than sixty years after Truman spoke those words, socialism still is marked by strong connotations and conflicting definitions in the United States. For decades, many Americans defined it in terms of the Cold War, equating the term with state control of the economy and, more often than not, authoritarian rule. Sanders, who first ran for Vermont governor forty-seven years ago, has found a following among a new generation that is not steeped in Cold War ideology. The movement, personified by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is trying to chart a path away from a new Gilded Age of garish inequality and rising economic anxiety. In recent weeks, as I spoke with dozens of voters and political figures in Wisconsin, it was clear from our conversations that the term conjures dramatically different images, from decency to social decay. Some equate socialism with a fair-minded social contract largely underwritten by a market economy, while others think of Stalin’s Soviet Union—or, more recently, Venezuela, where the late Hugo Chávez