I remember first hearing about the “East Coast Liberal Media Elite” when I was 17 and Sarah Palin was running for Vice President. This was part of her wider point that “real America” was not represented by the media and people in the central and southern parts of the country were not being given a fair shake. I’ve been thinking more about this after reading this article on vox. 

I fall within so many categories of “coastal liberal elite.” I have a BA in German and a MA in International Studies. I’ve lived in Germany while participating in a government-funded program. I’ve well-travelled within U.S. and Europe. In addition to voting for Hillary Clinton in both the primary and general election, I worked on her campaign in Philadelphia. I’m twenty-five and unmarried. I don’t have children. I love public media, and I just drank a smoothie than contained chia seeds. I’m so privileged by both my whiteness and my place in the middle class.

However, most of these qualities are a product of my life in “real America.” I grew up in rural Oklahoma, attended public high school, then went to the Universities of Arkansas and Oklahoma for my degrees. I learned German in Arkansas, and my experiences there were why I was able to live in Europe for a brief time. After I got my BA, I felt that I still hadn’t learned enough, so I went to graduate school in Oklahoma. You can be liberal and experience the world anywhere, especially with the internet. Your location doesn’t determine your life.

I’ve always been a bit different from my high school classmates, and these differences have increased with age. I am in the minority because I have neither a spouse nor children. I can’t see myself living in Oklahoma forever, mostly because job opportunities that I find interesting are generally not located here. I don’t enjoy stereotypical Oklahoman activities such as hunting or going to high school basketball games, but that doesn’t make me less Oklahoman. I’m still as much a product of this state as my classmates who never left my hometown.

Like the vox article says, it’s not a matter of geography; it’s a matter of economics. Growing up, both my parents worked salaried jobs. I was in the minority in my school, since many of my classmates were growing up in single-parent families and didn’t have the privileges that I did. Some people from my parents’ church and extended family have never actually said that I need to grow up and get a normal job with the requisite husband and kids, but they always respond to my stories with a polite awkwardness that shows that my way of life makes them uncomfortable.

One thing that people seem to forget is that “real America” has the same internet that the coastal part of the country has. (There are some exceptions to this; President Obama’s major visit to Oklahoma was to visit areas of the Choctaw Nation where people don’t have internet access.) This country has so many things in common; people are people. No part of this country is more real than any other because any type of person can emerge from any part of this country.