Visions of Americana

As New Yorkers, we tend to think of our country as two worlds: city and country, diverse and homogenous, progressive and conservative. This perspective dominates how we perceive small towns across the country, stereotyping them as everything urban life is not. With the election of Donald Trump, this division could not have been more overstated: urban areas voted one way, and the rest of the country voted the other. And yet, when I took a trip to visit upstate New York, where my dad grew up, I saw past my own stereotypes and witnessed the evolution of rural America.

We drove around winding roads dotted with houses as my dad recounted stories from his upbringing with each familiar landmark. We passed by the ice cream shop—a staple of Americana— whose sign read “Best Ice Cream in the U.S.A!” But to my dad, who grew up in a town filled with people who looked like him and sounded like him, what shocked him were the signs of growing diversity.

Interspersed with the houses that draped American flags on their front porches were houses with Puerto Rican, Dominican Republic, and Mexican flags. We passed “Blue Lives Matter” signs and front lawns bearing “I’m With Her” posters in the same instant. What we witnessed was not the old small town of yesterday, the one my father grew up in, but instead the changing face of America.

Rural America has seen the largest growth of minority populations in the United States, surpassing the growth of these populations in America’s urban centers. A 2012 National Library of Medicine report found that Hispanic populations in rural America represented 56 percent of its population growth from 2000 to 2010, and towns across America are quickly becoming more and more diverse.

A question is then raised: if suburban and rural America is becoming more diverse, why did it overwhelmingly vote for Trump? It is important to understand that while an area may become more diverse, not everyone living there is accepting of the changing status quo. A Pew Research poll found that only 20 percent of conservatives prefer to live in areas of mixed cultural diversity, meaning rural and suburban conservatives often vote for candidates who promise to restore the America of yesteryear: one that’s homogenous and less subject to change.

As we were driving, my dad and I stopped at a textile mill with a smokestack that had dominated the skyline of his town since before the Civil War. When we went inside, we found the entire factory—which had once been a staple of blue-collar jobs—had been converted into a brewery and arts center.

In her NPR article, “Leaving Urban Areas For The Political Homogeneity Of Rural Towns,” Mary Lou Reed of Kootenai County, Idaho, discusses the changing workplace of her town, noting, "The lumber mills are all gone, the mines are shuttered down, we do not have labor unions that are active.” Instead, small town Americans are embracing new businesses and enterprises across the United States. When considering this, that industrial factory-turned-brewery makes sense, and it is one small piece of a puzzle depicting a changing country.

The election of Donald Trump only heightened the perceived differences between city and rural populations. On a map of voters by county, cities in blue are swallowed up in vast expanses of rural red, as Trump won 3,084 of America's 3,141 counties. Hillary Clinton won just 57. Post-election coverage typecast the “angry white voter” who saw a changing country and voted against it as the catalyst for Trump’s victory.

This introduces another angle, one where rural Americans were pushed by our condescending urban stereotypes—describing non-urbanites as uneducated and irrational—to endorse a candidate such as Trump. A recent Salon article proves that urban intellectuals hold these stereotypes, reading, “In the ‘real America,’ people don’t read The New York Times at all. One who rejects the pursuit of knowledge will not place much emphasis on intellectual rigor when voting for president.”

Our visions of Americana tend to focus on small towns with white picket fences, local ice cream shops, and main street Fourth of July celebrations. Yet, the country is changing; towns are becoming more diverse and less reliant on industrial jobs. If we want the last election to not repeat itself, we need to embrace a changing America instead of continuing to push other Americans away.