Liam Thomas McManaman | Staff Illustrator

When I discuss my University with people from the Bay Area, they promptly ask me some version of “How’s Missouri?” They enunciate “Missouri” like the state is pitiful, desolate, or even horrifying.

I can speak to the pretentious mindset of people from coastal and blue states toward the Midwest and South because I used to have one, too. I grew up travelling from Berkeley, California to these regions to visit my mom’s side of the family, who occupy nearly every state bordering Missouri. I turned up my nose at their activities, culture, and people, but when I started attending WashU and living in a Midwestern city, I realized how misguided I had been.

People’s critiques of Missouri, along with the rest of the Midwest and the South, are pretentious and problematic. These biases buttress political and social polarization.

Degrading St. Louis is commonplace at WashU as well. Since my first year, I have been in countless conversations with students who have superiority complexes about their home states and cities, painting St. Louis as utterly lacking in fun, culture, beauty, and nature. 

Still, it would be wrong to say that the majority of these students have actually lived in St. Louis. Students’ mindsets toward the Midwest make the WashU bubble, a phenomenon where students do not venture far beyond campus, a self-fulfilling and ironic cycle. Students disparage St. Louis when they have seen very little of the city, which reinforces their disinterest in discovering what lies beyond these misconceptions.

These pretentious attitudes are also rooted in the misconception that red states are filled with only ignorant conservatives. This view of “ignorance” overlooks how people have different access to information and education based on their region —a systemic issue, not a people issue. People in red states can be more vulnerable to misinformation, have less funding for public education (especially in rural areas), and face conservative policies like book bans. Beyond this, people are deeply influenced by the values and beliefs of the communities where they live and are raised. There are, therefore, complex, systematic reasons that individuals in red states may have different understandings of the world than those in blue states.

Essentialist views of red states as purely composed of white, right-wing extremists overlook a huge portion of Midwestern and Southern individuals. Many individuals in these states, and often the majority in big cities like St. Louis, are left-wing. These liberal critics from blue states claim to support people from marginalized communities, but overlook the huge number of people of color and low-income individuals in these regions who face the worst impacts of conservative policies. The majority of the Black population lives in the Southern United States, for example, and St. Louis has one of the largest proportions of Black people of any U.S. city. 

The critiques of Midwestern cities like St. Louis are often grounded in classism. Claims that St. Louis is a dangerous city or does not have the same architecture and infrastructure as one’s home city overlook the structural factors that may contribute to these claims. 

The WashU bubble harms more than just students’ own experiences; it also contributes to the negative relationship between WashU and the rest of the city. We live right next to the Delmar Loop, which marks the Delmar Divide, signifying the drastic wealth and racial disparities dividing North and South St. Louis. WashU students, who are largely high-income and white, often do not enter or interact with the people from North St. Louis or other low-income and predominantly Black areas. Many students do not contribute to the city’s economy while residing in a significantly whiter and wealthier area, reinforcing the wealth disparity. 

These classist critiques extend to those beyond St. Louis. At large, the cost of living is far higher in coastal states compared to the Midwest and South. People living in red districts also have, on average, lower incomes than those in Democratic districts. 

If we continue to dismiss these areas out of prejudice, their politics and laws will only continue to get worse. Progressive and leftist individuals should consider putting their work into understanding the needs and promoting the civil rights of people in states where they are most at risk. More importantly, we must meaningfully engage with people from different regions of the U.S., including those with different political beliefs, rather than degrade their home states. It is all too common for liberals to complain about political polarization while actively building it.

Treating states like Missouri as flyover states or, worse, degrading St. Louis and the state while actively living there, disregards its culture and value, and the humanity of its people. 

Disregarding St. Louis as a WashU student who has not explored the city means you will never break out of the bubble you have manufactured for yourself, both by only staying on campus and by staying among people like yourself. Beyond WashU, discounting states like Missouri perpetuates racial, income, and political divides. This pretentious mindset exemplifies the prejudice you claim to critique.