Midwestern Nice: A Culture of Kindness or Control? 

Midwestern Nice. It’s sounds nice. It sounds like it’s served with a coffee, a smile, small talk, and a side of biscuits and gravy. It’s a distinct brand of politeness that defines an entire region. It stretches from Ohio in the east to Missouri’s Bootheel in the south, from Nebraska’s panhandle in the west to Minnesota’s Northwest Angle in the north. The Midwest is shaped not only by its farms and faith but by its deeply ingrained culture of niceness. That culture led to my new neighbors bringing me fresh baked cookies shortly after I purchased by house just outside Kansas City, Missouri. That culture led to many of my coworkers starting every conversation for a month by asking me how my son was doing after his second surgery in less than two years. That culture is one where the Mayo Clinic, a world-renown, elite research hospital (based in heart of the Midwest in Minnesota) recommends people get in the habit of “practicing the kindness behind Midwest nice.” This perpetual politeness is why, on any given day in the Midwest, you’ll hear phrases like “Let me slip past you real quick” (Midwestern for excuse me), “No, you’re fine” (translation: don’t worry about it), and my personal favorite—one that’s been in my verbal toolbox my entire life—“Ope!” A single syllable that accompanies any minor misstep or social faux pas. Midwestern Nice is more than manners; it’s a way of life.

It’s a way of life I eagerly wanted to return to ever since I left in 1990. It took me 32 years, however, to do just that. In 2022, I made the difficult decision of resigning my tenured position teaching English at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada to accept a position with the University of Missouri (MU). It was difficult for any number of reasons, but one of the most difficult was resigning tenure. Tenure is the coveted carrot in higher education, and while it felt a little like a hollow carrot once I got it, it’s still tough to let go of a guaranteed faculty position. A few other reasons it was so difficult: inflation, record-high prices for moving trucks, soaring interest rates for mortgages, and a 1,600-mile-long trek across 12 mountain ranges—many of which were blanketed in either snow or rain—all while traveling with three vehicles, two small children, and a dog. On top of all that, leaving the West Coast, the place that helped shape me for more than three decades, was its own kind of difficult. 

Returning Home to Nostalgia and Niceness

Despite the difficulties, I returned with my family to Missouri with much hope, but also with considerable trepidation. A warning from The Great Gatsby, a novel I’ve taught countless times, has always lingered in my mind: Nick Carraway, the story’s narrator and voice of reason, warns Jay Gatsby, “You can’t repeat the past.” Idealistically and naively Gatsby (originally a Midwesterner I might add) retorts, “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!…I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before…” Ultimately, the novel ends with the death of both Gatsby and his dreams of returning to the past. Going back, it seems to me, always carries with it unforeseen and unfavorable consequences. 

One of the most unforeseen consequences of moving back to the Midwest is something I couldn’t have fully understood unless I had left in the first place, and it’s this: that unique brand of nice that is the hallmark of the Midwest, the one that brought fresh-baked cookies to my door, is often fresh-baked bullshit. It’s a facade. Midwestern Nice is performative politeness masking a simmering undercurrent of passive-aggressiveness and distrust. Midwestern Nice, in theory, is a quality worth emulating, but in practice, comes with a plethora of covert caveats. In the same publication I previously mentioned where the Mayo Clinic encouraged people to embrace the habit of “practicing the kindness behind Midwest nice,” they also acknowledged that “Midwest Nice is sometimes described as being passive-aggressive — speaking politely to someone’s face while voicing displeasure behind the person’s back or through subtle, unkind actions.” I was born in KC, but I was bred in the IE—California’s Inland Empire, just outside of LA—and the West Coast taught me a simple truth: talking shit behind someone’s back but lacking the courage to say it to their face isn’t just cowardly and weak—it’s the antithesis of nice.

Worse still are the so-called nice people who sabotage, hinder, or harm “through subtle, unkind actions,” all while maintaining a veneer of friendliness. My enemies don’t even stoop that low. Enemies take their shot head-on—they don’t lurk in the shadows, sneaking and scheming. That, at least, I can respect. A wolf attacks directly. I can see it coming, I know its intentions, and I know how to defend myself in response. Far more menacing, though, is a wolf in sheep’s clothing—or since I live in Kansas City: a wolf in Chiefs’ clothing. Here, packs of wolves don the Chiefs’ colors. They smile, extend a hand, and feign friendship, all while hiding their true, predatory nature. They feign camaraderie while quietly working against you. And when they finally strike, they do it like cowards—from behind.

This may seem like an overly harsh critique of Midwestern Nice, but I assure you, it is not. This isn’t just a disgruntled rant about two-faced Midwesterners who are kind one moment and duplicitous the next. The neighbor who once brought me cookies with his kids in tow is now a friend, and we frequently help each other shovel driveways on the street when it snows. He also attends sessions for the Veteran R.E.A.D.S., a veteran-focused program I lead for MU in KC. He is not my target, nor are all Midwesterners. Pigeonholing an entire population is a sweeping form of ignorance that disregards the complexities shaping individual experiences and regional nuances. That said, the persistence and pervasiveness of Midwestern Nice make it ripe for critique. Calling out Midwestern Nice as a deeply ingrained cultural practice of social charades is not harsh or disgruntled—it’s the truth. It’s also an honest acknowledgment of the very reasons Midwesterners adopted it in the first place.

The Barn-Raising Roots of Midwestern Nice & the Broken Branches of a Tradition’s Decline

The origins of Midwestern Nice are deeply rooted in the region’s cultural and historical fabric, shaped by immigrant influences, social norms, and a strong emphasis on communal harmony. In their 2013 article, “A Theory of the Emergence, Persistence, and Expression of Geographic Variation in Psychological Characteristics,” Rentfrow, Gosling, and Potter identify the Midwest as part of the “Friendly & Conventional” psychological region, characterized by traits such as sociability, agreeableness, and a respect for tradition. These traits, in a large part, stem from the Scandinavian and German immigrants who settled in the region, bringing values of humility, hard work, and a reluctance to engage in direct confrontation—European values and culture still alive and well in quaint, rural towns like Cole Camp, Missouri. As local historian Neil Heimsoth notes, “at least 80% of those people [in Cole Camp] yet are descended from some of those original families.” This cultural foundation fostered a deep sense of community, exemplified by the tradition of barn raisings—events where neighbors collaborated to build barns, reinforcing mutual reliance and social cohesion.

The agrarian nature of the Midwest made cooperation essential, with barn-raising culture serving as a prime example. As journalist Cinnamon Janzer explains in “Preserving Barns: Timeless Symbols of Community Collaboration”for Arts Midwest, building a barn was a monumental task that could not be accomplished by one person alone and required the collective effort of the community, making it essential to maintain good relationships with neighbors to secure their help. Consequently, in the quid pro quo exchange of early Midwestern immigrant communities, niceness was the quid that earned the quo of barn-raising labor. Naturally, once a community did coalesce to raise a barn, that collaborative labor reinforced social bonds and created a sense of shared responsibility. As the Michigan Barn Preservation Network notes, these barn-raising events brought “joy that people have when they work together, shoulder to shoulder, accomplishing a significant piece of work like raising a [barn] frame.”

Barn-raising culture thus played a pivotal role in shaping Midwestern Nice as a transactional skill, essential for survival in the newly settled Midwest. The old-world wisdom of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack for the Year of Christ 1744, which states, “Tart words make no friends: a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar,” clearly resonated with the early Midwesterners, reinforcing the value of niceness-diplomacy in fostering cooperation and building community. However, as the necessity for barn-raising labor faded in modern times, so too did the quid pro quo exchange that once underpinned Midwestern Nice. With the advent of modern equipment and hired crews to construct barns, the original purpose of niceness—cooperation for the collective good—lost its clear, tangible reward.

Instead, what was once a vital transactional skill has become for many an empty performance, a niceness devoid of concrete purpose. Now Midwestern Nice is kindness without any commitment; an exhibition that requires minimal effort or energy. This shift from genuine, practical exchanges to performative expressions created a void—one that was swiftly filled with passive-aggressiveness, repressed bitterness, and gaslighting, all of which now define much of Midwestern interaction. Without the structured exchange of mutual benefit, Midwestern Nice turned inward, transforming into a social charade where politeness masks unspoken resentment and unmet expectations. The absence of the quo—the reciprocal labor and collaboration—left behind a culture of superficial cordiality, where niceness became not a reflection of community, but a shield to cover the cracks beneath it. 

This hollowing out of true connection that has led to a culture where gestures replace genuine engagement is precisely what my colleague at the University of Missouri, David Burton—one of the genuinely kindest people I have met—has sought to address in the region. He taught me the difference between so-called “waving neighbors” and truly engaged neighbors. Waiving neighbors are the ones who consistently wave at you on the street, from their cars, and in their yards, but they’ll avoid conversations, connection, or commitment seemingly at all costs. The wave is a staged performance for all to see. It’s for that reason David started and now leads the Engaged Neighbor Program for MU because he believes that real neighboring, the kind built upon actionable kindness, not just showy niceness, “takes effort, time and purposeful planning.”  

How Japan Informed My Understanding of Midwestern Nice

I mentioned earlier that I wouldn’t have been able to see beyond the surface-level sensitivity of Midwestern Nice had it not been for the years I spent living in the West and overseas. Specifically, my time in Japan helped me identify the cracks in the facade of Midwestern Nice. One of the most striking features of Japanese culture is its extreme politeness. Anyone who has ever traveled there can immediately recognize just how deeply ingrained this politeness is in everyday interactions. However, beneath this outward grace lies a more complex undercurrent, one that I came to understand better while reading Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture while I was living in Yokosuka. 

Written in 1946 at the request of the U.S. government to better understand post-war Japan, Benedict’s anthropological study explores the duality of Japanese behavior, where politeness (the chrysanthemum) coexists with hidden aggression (the sword). This duality, according to Benedict, reflects a tension between maintaining public harmony and suppressing private discord. The concepts of on (obligation) and giri (moral duty) govern social interactions, compelling individuals in Japan to adhere to social expectations while avoiding direct confrontation. Yet, this suppression of open conflict often manifests as subtle, indirect resistance. One example of this is the term gaijin, meaning “foreigner.” While gaijin is not inherently negative, it often conveys a polite distance, signaling an unspoken sense of otherness or exclusion. This “polite distance,” though outwardly courteous, often conceals suspicion or a lack of genuine understanding toward those who do not conform to cultural norms. Sound familiar, middle America? It’s this blend of concealed hostility and surface-level politeness that makes Japanese politeness the Eastern counterpart to America’s Midwestern Nice, both masking deeper tensions and suppressing authentic connection in favor of maintaining a socially acceptable appearance.

Fortunately, the Japanese are self-aware enough to make a crucial distinction between tatemae (建前) and honne (本音). Tatemae refers to the public facade or outward behavior that adheres to social norms, often masking one’s true feelings or intentions. Honne, on the other hand, refers to one’s true feelings or underlying truth. Tatemae is the mask; honne is the reality beneath it. This is why I now dislike and distrust Midwestern Nice. It’s tatemae— a mask, a carefully crafted facade designed to hide the truth. It’s a lie dressed up for the public stage. 

How Facades, Groupthink, and White Lies Sustain Midwestern Nice

I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that tatemae—like all the other ways we lie—has its usefulness. Author Stephanie Ericsson writes in her essay “The Ways We Lie”, “No matter how pious we may try to be…” we all lie “…to lubricate the daily machinery of living.” Thus, the tatemae (or mask) of Midwestern Nice lubricates the daily machinery of living by simplifying and expediting small interactions with strangers and acquaintances, but when it becomes a default setting for one’s character and demeanor, it becomes a corrosive social force.

This corrosion is precisely what Ericsson warns about in her discussion of the facade— one of the ten lies she unpacks in her essay. As she observes, “…facades can be destructive because they are used to seduce others into an illusion.” This is why a disposition of polite distance toward anything or anyone becomes a form of seduction. It deceives the person dispensing the pleasantries into believing that by being nice, they are being good, but the two are not always the same. It also seduces the recipient into believing they are engaging with a kind and genuine person. The reality, however, as I’ve pointed out before, is that they’ve been lured into engaging with a possible wolf in waiting.

Combine the lie of the facade with the lie of groupthink, another lie Ericsson highlights, and it’s a recipe for moral decay. Groupthink, she explains, occurs when “loyalty to the group has become more important than any other value, with the result that dissent and appraisal of alternatives are suppressed.” For groupthink to take hold, however, it requires other forms of dishonesty— “…ignoring facts, selective memory, omission, and denial, to name a few.” And within this framework of lie identification that Ericson offers, the white lie adds another layer of deception, often masking discomfort or dissent with the illusion of harmony. This lie perpetuates the idea that everything is fine (as in “No, you’re fine”) even when it (or you) isn’t. Thus, when the facade of tatemae is paired with the lies of groupthink and the white lie, Midwestern Nice becomes a pernicious cultural cocktail for those who haven’t been inoculated against its subtle pressure to conform.

Midwestern Nice, then, isn’t just performance; it’s a form of calculated gatekeeping, where warmth is weaponized to exclude, deflect, and maintain control—all while ensuring no one can call it outright hostility. It’s saving face while simultaneously shutting doors, keeping outsiders at arm’s length, and and ensuring that discomfort is masked by a tight-lipped smile. Midwestern Nice has been generationally refined into a passive-aggressive art form—attacking from behind, below, and afar but never directly. After all, one wouldn’t want the world to know they’re not actually that nice. Again, I am not being overly critical or harsh of what seems, on the surface, an innocuous regional trait. History and data reveal the not-so-nice realities beneath a longstanding superficial surface. 

How Midwestern Nice Controls Business Interactions

Tara Carr, Small Business Development Director at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, discusses the ways in which Midwestern Nice can hinder effective communication and collaboration in the workplace in her article, “The Impacts of Culture & Human Behavior in the Workplace.” She explains that,

“Midwesterners are more likely to avoid speaking to others in a perceived negative way, rather than deal with the issues directly. They respond by masking their feelings, discontent or frustrations. This passive aggressive behavior in the workplace can erupt in many ways: consistent negative attitude, being disruptive, blaming others for mistakes, making sarcastic comments, saying ‘yes’, but really wanting to say ‘no’, procrastination, insincere forgetfulness and/or sabotage.”

This negative Midwestern passive-aggressive behavior in the workplace is something I have encountered time and time again working for MU. I have had countless meetings where I’ve spoken my mind on an issue or an initiative, especially long-standing ones that no longer align with best practices or current research, and I’ve been met with an almost comical synchronized, social response: raised eyebrows, mile-long stares, incredibly slow head nods, and uncertain silence. Midwestern silence is pregnant with the status quo, so anyone suggesting change faces immediate silencing, and the most effective way to achieve an individual’s silence is by way of collective, cultural silence. 

As mentioned, there is a certain humor in witnessing the kind of high school prom-level social awkwardness that Midwesterners often display when confronted with divergent thinking. Despite the humor, it’s also incredibly frustrating—much like the juvenile behavior of high schoolers—when reality (e.g., data, facts, and reality) confronts culture (e.g., tradition, comfort, and zip code xenophobia), and culture painfully prevails. I have specific examples of the status-quo culture of Midwestern Nice killing research, funding, programming, and/or efficiency efforts at MU, but it’s best if I don’t name departments, individuals, or initiatives since I’m still an employee. For now, it’s enough to simply echo more of the words of Tara Carr: “being efficient by speaking your mind, in a direct way, is not appreciated or effective for the local [Midwestern] culture.” It is, however, an efficient way to brand yourself as an outsider or an other. I don’t mind ideas being shut down; that’s normal brainstorming in business, but as Monica Guzman in her book I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times says, “Othering goes too far when it tricks us into shrinking our world instead of expanding it” (30). The business of higher education should be the business of expanding the world of ideas, information, and opportunities for people, but all too often I have witnessed it shrink them in the nicest way possible. 

How Midwestern Nice Controls Progress in Education

While Midwestern Nice undeniably shapes business interactions, it is equally ingrained in education. The same cultural tendencies toward politeness and conflict avoidance that hinder workplace honesty also stifle progress in schools. This pervasive silence sustains the status quo, making meaningful change feel not just difficult but often impossible. By stifling discussions on systemic disparities—especially now under the current White House administration—the insistence on comfortable civility perpetuates existing inequities. As Drake and Rodriguez highlight in their research, “Nice to Whom?: How Midwestern Niceness Undermines Educational Equity,” “The demure nature of whiteness through niceness in the Midwest contributes to primarily ineffective initiatives that may seek to challenge racial inequities yet continue to fall short of their espoused commitments” (11). Dispositions that prioritize harmony over confrontation deepen disparities by silencing essential conversations about the root causes of inequality and the enduring legacy of segregation and discrimination shaping Midwestern institutions and social structures.

Emily Miller similarly explores this phenomenon in “The (Im)Possibility of Interrupting Midwest Nice in a Predominantly White, Small-Town School District.” Miller highlights how educators in the Dryden School District (DSD)—deliberately chosen for its size, racial demographics, and deep-seated struggles with equity and inclusion—grappled with challenging a culture of niceness defined by good intentions, comfort, and conflict avoidance. As she explains, 

“Niceness also requires avoiding what is unpleasant and uncomfortable through silence, passivity, and denial. Another defining feature of Niceness is its emphasis on good intentions. Because Nice people have good intentions, any harmful impacts of their actions are understood to be an accident or mistake” (3). 

This emphasis on good intentions over actual impact mirrors the ways in which Midwestern Nice shields individuals from accountability while allowing systemic inequities to persist. Ultimately, this dynamic creates an environment where meaningful change is stifled, as challenging inequities risks being perceived as impolite or disruptive. As a result, the cycle of silence continues, reinforcing the very disparities that equity and inclusion efforts aim to address.

Midwestern Nice, at it’s core, is a cultural likelihood of avoiding uncomfortable truths. It’s a desire to deflect from meaningful engagement on race and privilege by favoring surface-level civility over substantive dialogue. Rather than fostering understanding, this culture of avoidance leads to stagnation in institutions and individual relationships (more on this next). It stifles dialogue because, when the time comes to seriously address disparities, silence, as I have shown, becomes the default strategy. Drake and Rodriguez echo this point, “Nice, white Midwestern educators leveraged silence and arguments at opportune moments to protect their peace, and thus whiteness, from the perceived threat of racial dialogue” (14). Miller’s research expands on the silence strategy even more by demonstrating how, in the DSD, “doing what is nice, focusing on good intentions, maintaining comfort, and avoiding conflict, as many educators and administrators in Dryden did, ultimately hinders racial equity in education” (11). This passive and pervasive silence serves as a tool of control wielded by those in the Midwest who are too uncomfortable, too unwilling, and too afraid to confront difficult truths. It prevents individuals and communities from reckoning with systemic injustice, ultimately making it harder to implement policies and initiatives that drive meaningful change.

How Midwestern Nice Has Silently Sustained Structural Inequities

Sadly, the status quo in business and education for the Midwest is deeply rooted in a legacy of racial and socioeconomic inequity. Colin Gordon in the 2019 report Race in the Heartland: Equity, Opportunity, and Public Policy in the Midwest, highlights how historical policies of segregation, discrimination, and underfunding have led to persistent achievement gaps and social stratification, particularly for communities of color and those from low-income backgrounds. Anyone from Midwestern cities like Kansas City and St. Louis have seen, if not experienced, firsthand these historical policies of segregation, discrimination, and underfunding. These inequities are not only reflected in economic and educational outcomes but also in the ways that communities engage with (or fail to engage with) the structural issues that sustain these disparities.

To address these systemic inequities, it is essential to break through both the historical policies of segregation and discrimination and the cultural barriers created by Midwestern Nice. Drake and Rodriguez further emphasize that addressing issues of race and inequality requires creating spaces for difficult yet necessary conversations. The reasons for this, they conclude, are clear: “Midwestern educational niceness operates through other phenomena to simultaneously protect racial comfort, advance whiteness, and obstruct equity efforts in school” (16). Moreover, 

Midwestern educational niceness is incompatible with what is required to upend racial inequities in schools. While many white Midwesterners may prefer polite protest or comfortable conversation that emphasizes equality, those actions or discourses will not challenge the policies and practices that are deeply embedded in the structure of schooling, which marginalize already vulnerable youth, particularly youth of color” (18). 

If you are a person of color, as I am, you’ve lived with the truth of how businesses and schools can marginalize and minimize despite all the “nice” people who work there.  If you are a white person in the Midwest, as I am since I’m mixed, then you’ve lived with “the demure nature of whiteness through niceness in the Midwest” (Drake and Rodriguez). The problem, however, is this: niceness is not neutrality. When discomfort is avoided, growth in business, education, or life becomes impossible. Schools may promote diversity and inclusion—or perhaps schools now promote “heterogeneity” and “access” for those who are more rhetorically sensitive in the current political climate. But without a willingness to disrupt ingrained power structures or cultural norms, these efforts remain performative—and that is precisely the role of niceness to begin with. True equity, like actionable kindness or engaged neighboring, requires more than good intentions; it demands a conscious rejection of the silence that sustains the status quo. 

How Midwestern Nice Damages Personal Relationships:

Naturally, the culture of Midwestern Nice doesn’t only affect business and education; it affects personal relationships, too. Author Paul Kix, in his essay on Midwestern culture, “Midwestern Nice: A Tribute to a Sincere and Suffocating Way of Life,” shares his own experiences growing up in the Midwest:  

“As a kid, there was an almost tactile pressure hovering around the Christmases, Thanksgivings, and birthday parties at Grandma’s house — so much stuff we maybe wanted to say but couldn’t, even though we were family. The tension beneath the vanilla chitchat exhausted me, and I often left her home relieved that I could relax and be myself.”

Being with family on Christmas, the Fourth of July, or a casual gathering shouldn’t feel like walking on eggshells, but it often does—and this isn’t a unique dilemma to Midwestern families.  Unfortunately, the usual off-limits topics—money, politics, and religion—now often extend to parenting, sex, relationships, drugs, the environment, guns, local government, and more, especially in an era where everything is politicized. Conversations for most American adults have become a careful dance, each step measured to avoid triggering an argument or offending, rather than fostering honest dialogue. 

Maybe that’s why so many Americans, especially Midwesterners, defer to talking about sports; it’s one of the few topics where people can disagree without the fear of being gaslit, exiled from the family, or, at the very least, silently shut down. Sports is for sport; everything else is too charged, too personal, too risky. It’s why even family will sidestep conversations that matter, retreating to ones that don’t. Maybe that’s also the reason why levels of loneliness and depression are rising in the Midwest, for as author Johann Hari wrote in her book,Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions, “Loneliness is not the physical absence of other people. It’s the sense that you’re not sharing anything what matters with anyone else.” Avoiding those deeper conversations, the ones that truly connect us, leaves a void, one that erodes our sense of belonging and community. The things that matter—the struggles, joys, fears, even the taboos—are precisely the conversations that never take place. That’s why avoiding touchy topics isn’t “nice.” It isn’t an enriching social activity; it’s an impoverishing one. It evades discussion, depth, understanding, and truth, trading it all for comfort and surface-level civility. 

For Midwesterners, then, performance is often preferred to truth. Politeness outweighs honesty, and maintaining harmony takes precedence over real connection. Conversations become less about genuine exchange and more about performing the right social cues—smiling, nodding, and keeping the peace, even when the silence is suffocating. And that’s exactly the problem Kix describes. The weight of the unspoken, the tension beneath the surface, isn’t just exhausting, it’s stifling. When avoidance becomes the norm, even the safest spaces—our families—become places where we hold our breath instead of exhaling, where we shrink into our phones, phubbing, and facades instead of showing up as ourselves.

How Midwestern Nice Thrives with the Performance-Enhancing Drug of Social Media:

Speaking of phones, Midwestern Nice has found its perfect performance-enhancing drug in social media. The constant pressure to show off nice, neat lives on others’ feeds pushes people to embrace as a full-time job the the art of tatemae—remember, this is the Japanese notion of a public facade or outward behavior that adheres to social norms but often masks one’s true feelings or intentions. Smartphones, with their endless options for self-curation, provide the perfect playground for Midwestern Nice to run amok. Social media platforms feed addictions by rewarding only the best moments—filtered, conflict-free snapshots that align with a nice Midwestern ideal. In the digital world, people become trapped in an endless loop of seeking validation, comparing themselves to others, falling into self-doubt, and then attempting to push performative niceness to the next clickbait-level. The more we scroll, the harder it becomes to unplug and engage in real, unfiltered conversations, and the more we speak (or post) in subterfuge, the harder it becomes to speak (and post) in truth. This virtual performance reinforces the analog one. People become fixated on maintaining an impeccable facade of niceness in person and online and then in person and then online. It’s a vicious cycle that only reinforces superficial behaviors, stunting growth and genuine human connection. As I noted earlier, once the necessity for quid pro quo barn-raising labor faded, so did the exchange that once grounded Midwestern Nice. What was once practical cooperation evolved into a performative act, one fueled by passive-aggressiveness, repressed bitterness, and now social media photo-filtering and doomscrolling. 

Breaking the Mask of Midwestern Nice & The Need for Honest, Unfiltered Communication

Author Robert A. Heinlein, a Midwesterner from Butler, Missouri, wrote Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), a novel about a human raised by Martians who struggles to understand and adapt to Earth’s culture. In it, Jubal Harshaw—the wise old man archetype—offers this advice: 

“You can be at ease only with those people to whom you can say any damn fool things that comes into your head, knowing they will respond in kind, and knowing that any misunderstandings will be thrashed out right now, rather than buried deep and given a chance to fester.”

Jubal offers this advice because he values direct, honest communication and sees it as essential for genuine relationships. Throughout Stranger in a Strange Land, he is portrayed as a fiercely independent thinker who distrusts societal norms, bureaucracy, and hypocrisy. I relate to and respect Jubal because his statement reflects a truth I hold as well: real trust and comfort in relationships come from the ability to speak openly—without fear, judgment, or the passive-aggressive dance of avoidance that so often leads to festering resentment. 

I often feel like a stranger in a strange land now that I am back in the Midwest— like I’m the Martian in Heinlein’s novel struggling to understand and adapt to Midwestern culture despite the fact I’m a native of the land. Maybe I should have listened to that internal trepidation I felt before I moved back; the one that came from Nick Carraway’s words in The Great Gatsby when he warned Gatsby, “You can’t repeat the past.” Again, going back often has unfavorable consequences. That’s why the best cure for the rearview mirror is the road ahead. I desire truth, substance, color, and flavor. That’s what I need, and that’s what I’d argue the Midwest needs more of, too. I regularly teach to my composition students that “nice” is a weak, colorless word, so they shouldn’t use it in their writing. No one wants written on their tombstone, “He was nice”; no chef wants the review of their cuisine to be, “It was nice.” Anyone worth their salt doesn’t aim for nice; they should aim for unforgettable. If all I was in life was nice, then the life I lived was a waste. Nice is bland. Nice is docile. Nice is what you do, say, or be when you have nothing else to do, say, or be; it’s a placeholder—a social filler, no more meaningful than a verbal “umm.” Nice is flavorless and fragile— like Ned Flanders minus God. 

Thus, I’d argue Midwestern Nice needs to stop. The insistence on surface-level harmony at the expense of genuine connection and necessary conflict is juvenile and trite. Real community isn’t built on avoiding hard conversations; it’s built on the trust that those conversations can happen without fear of silencing or exile. Of course, if everyone in a particular place believes the lie of tatemae (the mask) then a honne-chekku (reality-check) is needed. To make that happen, one must step outside—at least for a while—the space where folks trade the truth for a lie. Traveling to places other than Branson and Buc-ee’s may help. That’s the power of diversity— a dirty word in these politically dirty times, I know, but that doesn’t negate its intrinsic value. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German polymath, once remarked on the value of diversity when he said, “He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.” Geoffrey Willans, an English writer, later echoed Goethe’s idea, saying, “You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.” These two white European men highlight a fundamental truth: genuine understanding requires the diversity of comparison and contrast. To truly comprehend something—whether it’s a language, culture, or idea—we must juxtapose it against something else. Without a point of comparison, things remain accepted but unexamined, like evidence that lacks context or scale. That’s the intrinsic value of diversity; it offers a contrast to one’s way of seeing and being in the world, providing alternative viewpoints that may challenge and improve one’s default assumptions. And that’s exactly how Midwestern Nice (and other forms of ideological or cultural myopia) will end. When a community that thrives on avoidance and illusion experiences the benefit of honesty and truth, like Jesus Christ once said,  “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32, NIV). 

Home is Where You No Longer Hide

At the heart of Midwestern Nice lies the avoidance of discomfort and difference—a preference for harmony over truth, for civility over authenticity. But as we’ve seen, this constant performance of politeness can foster more harm than good, especially when it perpetuates systems of inequity, denies meaningful dialogue, and stifles genuine connection. As the renown psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung once warned, “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” His words highlight how avoiding uncomfortable truths only causes them to grow in scope and scale. To break free from the confines of “nice” and mature to a place of real progress, the Midwest must begin to embrace uncomfortable conversations, challenge long-held traditions, and confront the truths buried beneath the facade. Just as Heinlein’s Jubal Harshaw advocates for openness and honesty in relationships, so too must we as a society foster environments where truth can be spoken, differences can be aired, and diverse growth can occur without the fear of disrupting the peace. 

Those who prioritize performative niceness over authentic engagement are either fearful or frightening—sheep themselves or wolves in sheep’s clothing. But the true danger for those who wear the mask isn’t just how they deceive others, it’s how they deceive themselves. In their pursuit of acceptance and the appearance of goodness, they undermine their own boundaries and betray their own convictions, not out of genuine care, but to uphold an image of righteousness. The first-century Pharisees did the same thing, presenting an outward appearance of virtue while inwardly disregarding the deeper truths of their own faith and morality. Their performative righteousness may have earned them social favor, but it also ensured the wrath of Christ, who saw through their self-serving facades. The same happens today—when the Midwest, or anyone, hides behind niceness to avoid real moral accountability, we risk building a culture of disingenuousness that silences truth, stifles growth, and perpetuates harm. True virtue is not about maintaining an image; it’s about the courage to confront one’s own failings, challenge harmful societal norms, and, most importantly, act with authenticity and integrity, even when it means breaking the illusion of peace. 

It’s possible I no longer feel at home in the Midwest—or at least not yet—because I’ve spent so much time navigating the facade of Midwestern Nice. I have little patience for people who pretend for a living; I don’t trust them. Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to people from places like Los Angeles or New York—there’s a raw honesty in them that I appreciate and even admire. They bring truth, substance, color, and flavor to the table. Sure, some of those coastal city dwellers can be wolves, too, but at least they don’t hide it. I feel more at home with those who have the backbone to be who they are, those who have the authenticity to tell me to my face “no,” “not happening,” or even “fuck off!” That I can respect. I have written before about my complex, lifelong relationship with the notion of home, and recently I read a line from Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz. It’s a pearl of wisdom that resonated deeply with me the moment I read it, and I think it’s one what pertains to my discussion here: “Home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.” In many ways, Midwestern Nice is all about escaping the discomfort of a moment; it’s about escaping truth, difference, and conflict—deflecting rather than confronting; in sum, it’s about escaping reality. Perhaps it is in this avoidance of what’s real in favor of what isn’t where the real attempt at control lies. It isn’t just about being “nice” but about controlling the narrative so as to project a nice one. True home, as Mahfouz suggests, isn’t built on embellishment or escape. It’s found in the courage to face reality, live without a mask, and be fully you, for when we do, that’s the nicest thing we can do, not for the world, but for our authentic selves.