The Midwest Has Meaning for More Than Just Whites
There is a rich history of Blacks in Middle America that too often gets overlooked
On June 16, 2018, the New York Times published an op-ed by Indianapolis-based writer Tamara Winfrey-Harris titled “Stop Pretending Black Midwesterners Don’t Exist.” It became the inspiration for this package.
I myself am not a Midwesterner, though I do have relatives in that area, as many of us do. But like Winfrey-Harris, I too have had enough. Since 2016, our nation has been bombarded with profiles upon profiles of the Midwest that have been paradoxically both informative and narrow. The region itself has been the site for political fascination, most recently due to the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency. While it is true that Trump’s victories in the Midwest were crucial to him defeating Hillary Clinton, that is not the whole story. That is never the whole story. As Winfrey-Harris writes in her op-ed, “It is a bitter irony, then, that many of the arguments about Mr. Trump’s appeal to Midwesterners make sense only if you pretend Black people don’t exist in the middle of the country.”
