I just got back from North Dakota. I had to take care of some family business. Other than driving on roads made greasier than Kamala Harris’s ethics by a spring snowstorm, it was a lot of fun.
Mostly observing the differences between government in a free state, and Minnesota.
There is no mask mandate. Some businesses will suggest a mask; in those, about half the people comply.
One enduring memory of growing up there: I was 16 before I met a black person. The ethnic mix has changed considerably – at the Walmart in Minot, I ran into pretty much the same assortment of people one runs into in any Twin Cities suburb. But “more ethnic minorities” doesn’t seem to have translated into “crappier politics”, because unlike Twin Cities suburbs, the place seems to have gotten more conservative over time, judging by Presidential and Gubernatorial results.
And yet the place is prosperous – “Help Wanted” signs were all over the place even though the oil boom is long past and I wasn’t in “oil country” anyway. There are some Democrats in Fargo who try to wave the class and race grievance flags, but generally “new” residents seem to be fitting in – including, in one highly unexpected case, a fairly prominent transgendered person who’s moved to a very unlikely place – which I bring up not to post PC points (about which I don’t care) but to point out that this move, along with most of the above, which would be called unthinkable by your CNN clacque, has gone over without any noticable social muss and fuss in this most utterly conservative place.
Why, it’s almost as if conservatism breeds tolerance, and a focus on what matters in life?
I come home to notice I’m not the only one who’s noticed it.
It used to be that people would get in the faces of those who were not like themselves, and sorry but the big Great Divide used to be religion, not gender, race or sexuality, but now it is simply, if you don’t get in my face, I won’t get in yours.
That’s tolerance.
It is also something the left, feeling its power, refuses to accept.
Face it, the struggle for woman, minority and gay rights is over and the battle is won. The gracious thing for them and their allies to do is to stop fighting.
Conservative people mind their own business and expect others to mind theirs; therefore, it makes no difference to us what you do in your own space as long as it doesn’t bother others.
Maybe the problem is people who have no business except bothering others?
JD – those who’s only business is bothering others have found that there’s money to be made in that business, and business is good.
I’m going to guess that most of the black peoples in Minot are connected in some way with the AFB.
That’s a whole different breed of cat.
Pete,
When I lived here, that would’ve been a fair assumption; In the 80s, the number of African-Americans in the state that weren’t military or university students was likely somewhere in mid three digits. At most.
But the different breed of cat observation covers all ethnicities: it’s easy to tell a baser apart from a local. The military demographic stands out, whoever they are and where ever you are.
But it’s not just in Minot. My hometown is the same.
That Breitbart article nails it.
Being a member of a southwest Minnesota farming family, I have to say that the mix of races that I have met while visiting, all seem to get along.
You are correct, Mitch.
When I was stationed at Grand Forks, the locals would call us “basers”, because even when we weren’t in uniform, they knew that we were. In fact, one of the single B52 pilots, organized a club to sort of mock the locals, which he named “Baszer City 58201”. Everyone paid a one time membership fee, that got you a tee shirt with the club name on it. Funny though; some locals didn’t get it, but the ones that did, actually got a chuckle out of it.
I remember living in Boulder, where a huge portion of black residents are those recruited to play football or basketball at CU, and was shocked at the level of racial strife there–it far exceeded what I saw growing up 19 miles (yes, I Mapquested it) from Michael Jackson’s boyhood home in Gary.
On the flip side, the level of racial and ethnic harmony in very conservative Waseca amazed me. It wasn’t just getting along, but rather a fair amount of intermarriage, joining churches, and such.
I personally wonder if a big part of the difference is that “blue” areas treat questions like “where are you from?” as a microaggression. The more peaceful “red” areas see the exact same question as “getting to know you”, and back it up with social interactions. There’s also what I saw when serving at a church in Compton; in “blue” areas with a lot of government involvement, the races learn, sadly, to see each other as rivals instead of neighbors since they’re competing for the same pot of resources. Outside the big cities, there’s not so much government involvement, and hence less competition for that resource.
I attended a K-8 Catholic School in St. Paul. Nearly every kid there was primarily Irish and/or German with a decent variety of other European ancestry, but Catholic was the predominant identifier. During my 9 years there I had 2 blacks classmates. When I moved to a non-religious highschool I had about a half dozen black classmates and a similar number of Asian classmates. The bigger “culture shock” thing for me though was dozen or so (observance levels varied) Jewish classmates, including one family that had immigrated from Israel.
Kids pay attention to their groups and the identifiers they use. The primary identifier for my social circles was Catholic, so I noticed and focused on religious affiliation, going so far as to distinguish between Catholics of different parishes and schools.
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