Wow. A year later I find your essay, and I must agree with almost everything you say.

I am a black, urban woman from the Northeast who married a white man from Southeast Iowa nearly 40 years ago. The town had few people of color, and black and white folks simply did not socialize. When we first visited my husband's hometown, most of my mother-in-law's neighbors had never had any sort of social interaction with a black person, and I was an object of wonder. Women couldn't hide the surprise on their faces when I spoke standard English, displayed good manners when eating, or knew anything at all. I, on the other hand, had never met people so parochial and unfamiliar with cultures beyond their own.

Whites in the Midwest, because they encounter or are close to so few blacks, have not yet learned to monitor their speech and behavior, as have whites in urban areas and on the coasts. A woman referred to her deeply-tanned grandchildren as "little darkies," (I swear) and one woman recounted her family's leaving Alaska "...because their girls were getting older, and, you know, we were afraid they might marry 'one.'" One, of course, being a native Alaskan. As recently as ten years ago, I met a man who could not bring himself to shake my hand. When we were introduced, he clasped his hands tightly in front of him. I don't know whether he was trying to force himself to be "social" and was losing, or he just didn't care.

I was noticed as soon as I entered any place, often being followed, while simultaneously being ignored for service.

Whites in "flyover country" simply don't know people of color as intimates; they hardly know any at all. Because their exposure to others is so rare, they easily believe and magnify any news they get about blacks. After all, it's usually sensationalistic coverage of crime, some so minor that you know it wouldn't be worthy of news if a white person committed the same offense.

I don't have much hope for social or political change in the Midwest. When Barack Obama became president, many of those folks suffered an existential crisis. How could a black man be "in charge" of them or the country? Rather than seeing the intelligence and competence of this one black man, or any other blacks, for that matter, they retreated more deeply into their fearful mindsets, and began acting out their fears of "them" taking over, even though there are so few "thems" in proximity..