When we hear the phrase “Rural White Voter”, a certain picture comes into our minds of red America. These three Democrats will tell you it isn’t accurate, and it isn’t representative.
by Mauve Maude
October 14, 2020
Lyz Lenz, author of God Land, grew up in rural, evangelical America. Lyz Lenz still lives and attends church in Iowa. But Lyz Lenz is not the rural, evangelical, Midwestern American so many urban, blue voters imagine, when they picture the red states or swing states that consistently, or sometimes, champion Republican candidates.
Lenz wrote her experience of the last few years in her book, and this entertaining Atlantic interview from 2019 captures her thoughts on America’s post-2016 fascination with the rural white voter, the Democrat-baffling enigma who supposedly handed that election to the forty-fifth President of the United States.
Christopher Ingraham also has some life experience with this matter, in Minnesota, as he writes in this excerpt from his book, If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now: Why We Traded the Commuting Life for a Little House on the Prairie.
My hometown was majority white, majority Baptist, and as you might guess, majority Republican. And somehow I managed to grow up none of those things, despite being born there, spending most of my childhood there, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every day for thirteen years.
I hear all of this very well. I grew up in rural, evangelical America too, in the South. I suppose the setting was more suburban, or perhaps, sub-suburban. When I tell people where I’m from, I usually just give them the region. Because if I tell them the name of the town I grew up in, I have to tell them what it’s near–the less small town up the highway, where I was born. And when they’ve never heard of either one, I have to relate them to the nearest cities, a hundred miles or so away in either direction. They can take their pick. “Urban” might fit the place of my birth, the county seat and commercial center, technically, in that there’s some measure of traffic and crime, but to me it seems a bit of a stretch.
Let’s just say I was never more than a few minutes away from pastures, woods, or tree-lined country roads. I was also never far from a church, or a football field, or Friday night football prayers you could hear a half mile from the stadium. My hometown was majority white, majority Baptist, and as you might guess, majority Republican. And somehow I managed to grow up none of those things, despite being born there, spending most of my childhood there, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every day for thirteen years. Unlike Lyz Lenz, though, I did not grow up in an evangelical household.
My parents seemed to be Everything Not Our Hometown, and they still are. They are an interracial couple, married in the seventies after meeting in high school, the same one I would attend twenty years later. They amassed what very well may be the largest private library in the region. They sometimes sang restaurant gigs together, and still perform at private parties or community events. And in the early eighties they converted from Reagan-voting Christians to Zen Buddhist Democrats. I was raised very proudly liberal, very proudly different, and very outspoken, at least in safe spaces–which my high school classrooms always were, even if I was the only person speaking up on the left side of an argument. I received a very good education, I learned to thrive where I grew up, and as a young adult, I took myself off to college in a big, blue city, where I wasn’t so unique.
I am still living in twenty-first century America . . . All of these people around me are rural voters, and so am I.
Then after a couple decades away, learning, working, parenting, and surviving, I came back, with children of my own, to find a better life in rural, evangelical America. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t experience some initial culture shock. But I felt somewhat silly after the fact.
I am still living in twenty-first century America, after all, in the small “urban” seat of my county, and a change of culture is what drew me back. I’m not the first parent to bring my children back to live here. I am not the new, single rural brown voter. My little county has voters Black, brown, Asian, Muslim, and immigrant, and no country record scratches when we walk into the room (although sometimes I like to imagine it does). The kids at my children’s schools look just like the kids at their old schools. My middle-schooler has a more diverse line-up of teachers this year than she’s ever had. We have microbreweries, espresso shops, public transit, and Pride Fest in the summer. I beat the local walking trails with other happy people who love fresh air and say hello, and probably don’t vote the way I do. Some of them wear their masks. I bring mine and rarely put it on. And some people here in this Republican county sleep on the streets. I’m still home. This is where I was born. This is the place I know. And while I’ve definitely known old men who hang out in diners and talk about how great everything used to be, I can’t say they’re the dominant force of the air we breathe here, even if they symbolize the dominant force of the country.
My parents are still my parents here too. They belong to their town. They live in the same house we moved into when I was eight, making them some of the longest inhabitants on the block, two blocks away from where they met. You can take a short walk in the evening and watch the marching band practice. Their yard is full of campaign signs for Democrats, some neighbors’ yards are full of signs for Republicans, and some yards don’t have any signs at all. Sometimes they receive quiet approval of their beliefs, and sometimes it’s exuberant. They have liberal atheist friends, liberal Christian friends, friends who are ministers. And they have conservative friends, one of whom brought a bottle of my dad’s favorite wine to their house the other day. My grandparents are still here, the finest Christian people I know, devoted churchgoers when not in the midst of a pandemic. My mother’s parents always used to vote Republican. They don’t anymore. But we have plenty of other conservative family members beyond the limits of our small town. One cousin has lived and will live in the same tiny town her whole life. She is pro-life, pro-police, supports the President, and is a die-hard Freddie Mercury fan. She knows more about Freddie Mercury than anyone I’ve ever met.
All of these people around me are rural voters, and so am I.
So, I still see it as I’ve written before. People are more complex than what the media shows us, often more for our own entertainment these days than for the truth. Stereotypes are just far too simple, and not very helpful, or constructive. Because while counties and states may go red or go blue, this country–rural, urban, suburban, and sub-suburban–is more purple than people think.