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Does Oklahoma lean towards being a Southern, Midwestern or Western state? This is something that I've always been puzzled about. I want to hear what Oklahoma residents and people outside of OK think.
As a Wisconsinite, Oklahoma to me is not at all Midwestern, or at least the kind of Midwestern I'm accustomed to. I always file it away with Texas, part Southern/part Western.
It's a general area containing most of Oklahoma, a sizable chunk of Texas, and bits of Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Oklahoma gets the short end of the stick when it comes to being classified because it's the only (more-or-less) complete state that is fairly homogenous throughout, as most of its neighbors straddle at least two different regions. KS and MO are mostly Midwestern, AR is mostly Southern with a bit of Western, Texas is, well, Texas, and NM and CO are firmly Western. OK is simply the crossroads of all of these.
As others have said, it's culturally Southern with some Western touches thrown in there. The Midwest stuff is just false. Oklahoma has nothing in common with states like Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, et al.
SOUTHwest (as in Oklahoma, Texas, and western Arkansas) and not SouthWEST (New Mexico and Arizona) is the most helpful way to think of it culturally.
In the topographical sense, Oklahoma has a lot of diversity. This is not true culturally. Oklahoma is overtly Southern in its cultural semblances, or perhaps better, a derivative of Southern culture.
I'd say Oklahoma is extremely southern. Just as southern as Mississippi or Alabama, only thing that's western about it is parts of the state are pretty dry.
In my opinion, geographically it is Western, hands down. But culture wise, I would probably say Southern because it has that more Texan influence, and Texas is considered part of the South.
To me, Oklahoma has an alien vibe that I don't experience in either the West or Midwest, which is why I don't think it's outlandish to say that it's irrefutably Southern.
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