Subregions of the Midwest (demographics, between, state)

[PerseusVeil]

Originally Posted by Cleverfield

Those two maps are what you base every single one of your assertions on, however you're grossly oversimplifying the complexity of regional identity. Accents and ancestry are not the only factors that determine regional identity. Religion, culture, and history are other big factors that don't necessarily correspond to linguistic and ancestral lines. The fact that Missouri is the only majority Baptist state in the midwest should tell you that it has qualities that identify it more with the South than the Midwest.

Beyond Baptists in its suburbs, please do explain to us why metro Kansas City should be considered Southern. Even the Missourian in this thread who identifies as Southern doesn't identify at all with KC.

[NowInWI]

Good grief, people. Missouri is a Midwestern state...just look at the classifications on a map. None of us get to have it our way - it is what it is. Just because a state might have a different religion or political leaning, doesn't mean it isn't part of the region it's a part of. There are definitely some in this thread who are trying to denigrate the Midwest, but who cares? They're strangers with a bias...that's all.

[Cleverfield]

Originally Posted by PerseusVeil

Beyond Baptists in its suburbs, please do explain to us why metro Kansas City should be considered Southern. Even the Missourian in this thread who identifies as Southern doesn't identify at all with KC.

Kansas City and St. Louis are probably outliers. The rest of the state has a heavy Southern influence.

[U146]

Originally Posted by Cleverfield

Those two maps are what you base every single one of your assertions on, however you're grossly oversimplifying the complexity of regional identity. Accents and ancestry are not the only factors that determine regional identity. Religion, culture, and history are other big factors that don't necessarily correspond to linguistic and ancestral lines. The fact that Missouri is the only majority Baptist state in the midwest should tell you that it has qualities that identify it more with the South than the Midwest.

You're using one classification to say Missouri is Southern and completely ignoring what I said earlier...Missouri only leans Southern in one area in most of the state...that is religion. That's it.

[U146]

Originally Posted by Cleverfield

Kansas City and St. Louis are probably outliers. The rest of the state has a heavy Southern influence.

You don't know a thing about Missouri. Religion is the only way the vast majority of the state is Southern. By your logic, an African American with a Caucasian ancestor would be identified as Caucasian. That's the ridiculousness of your argument. Culturally the state is part of the Midwest. Religion is the only way Missouri can be classified as Southern. And you're using one characteristic to paint the state as Southern when I've clearly given two proving it isn't. How does your characteristic have more weight than mine do? You've got some explaining to do.

[PerseusVeil]

Originally Posted by Cleverfield

Kansas City and St. Louis are probably outliers. The rest of the state has a heavy Southern influence.

Your outliers contain the majority of the state's population. I also welcome you to go tell the Missourians up by Iowa or north of St. Louis along the Illinois border that they're Southern.

Have you been to Missouri?

[dude1984]

I think there are actually 3 sub-regions of the Midwest...in my opinion. I separate the plains by elevation, and the northwoods from the plains because the northwoods is a whole other world. Because you're going from open fields to some of the densest forest in North America, it is an entirely different culture.

1) High Plains: Eastern Montana, eastern Wyoming, eastern Colorado, northeastern New Mexico, western North Dakota, South Dakota, western and central Nebraska and Kansas, western Oklahoma, Texas panhandle;

2) Low Plains: Eastern Nebraska and Kansas, eastern Oklahoma, north central Texas, far eastern North Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, the southern lower peninsula of Michigan, and most of Minnesota and Wisconsin;

3) Northwoods: Northern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula and northern lower peninsula of Michigan;

[Ivory Lee Spurlock]

Missouri was a border state during the Civil War, but it's still in the Midwest, sitting smack dab in the middle of the country. Whenever I cross into the Missouri Bootheel from Arkansas, it soon begins to feel very Lower Midwestern. The Ozarks in Missouri and Arkansas feels more Lower Midwestern to me than it feels Southern. I don't feel like I'm in the South in Arkansas until I get South of the Ozarks. The region lacks the diversity of the traditional South. Springfield and Bentonville feels more like Evansville and Topeka than it feels like Hattiesburg and Valdosta, and even Pine Bluff.

[moxiegal]

Originally Posted by U146

Most of Missouri isn't Southern and it was more pro Union than pro Confederate. And West of the Mississippi is not Midwest. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio are all solidly Midwestern states.

I am a KC native, and both of my parents are from southern Missouri, from I-70 south.
Therefore, I speak as a Missourian.
I received the state history education, while attending public school, and am aware of what that history includes.

[U146]

Originally Posted by moxiegal

I am a KC native, and both of my parents are from southern Missouri, from I-70 south.
Therefore, I speak as a Missourian.
I received the state history education, while attending public school, and am aware of what that history includes.

Good then you should agree with what I'm saying.