Pride flags are hung up outside of restaurants. In a coffee shop you can spot at least one “Harris, Walz” sticker on a laptop. Compost bins commonly accompany trash and recycling bins. I’m used to this, I like it because it’s easy to feel like all are welcome in the bubble that is Boulder County.
Every Coloradoan knows the feeling of the humidity rushing to your face when you step off a plane that landed at sea level. How your clothes suddenly cling to your skin and your hair suddenly puffs up. It feels like you’re breathing in soup.
When I stepped off the Boeing 737 that brought me from Denver to Georgia, I anticipated not only the dreaded humidity and weekend of bad hair days, but also frightening images built up in my head by people back home.
Driving three hours to the University of Georgia campus that weekend, my eyes laser focused on every car we passed as I looked for a rectangular sticker with block lettering reading “MAGA”. The next day I drove another three hours to Alabama. Still no sticker.
My eyes searched for those infamous red MAGA hats. I looked for flags that said “TRUMP, VANCE” in frat windows, not uncommon to see when walking through the University of Colorado. I looked for lifted pick up trucks with flags mounted on the ends. I looked. Trust me, I looked.
On Auburn’s campus, I saw protesters sitting on the busiest corner of the campus. They held signs that read things like “Coexist” and “Trans lives matter.” I thought surely something bad was about to happen. Instead, people stopped to give words of encouragement, or just kept walking.
When I tell people in Colorado that I was born in Texas, I’m met with reactions like “Ew!” or “I’ll bet you’re glad that you moved here!”.
My family is from the Austin area. My visits are filled with trips tubing down the Comal River, catching frogs in the stream by my uncle’s house, eating delicious food my Grandma cooked for me, and devouring Mexican food.
Why would I be scared to go to Texas?
I’m going to college in the South, but I’m a left-leaning person in Boulder County. When I express this to people, I’m met with concerned looks and loaded comments.
“Wow, that’s certainly a choice!”
I am sick of this idea that everyone in the South is crazy. That’s what people here think. They push their agenda on you any chance they get, they all own at least one AR-15 and that red hat.
There are people in the South who think everyone in Democratic states are crazy.
Both are wrong. Get out of the bubble, put your biases aside.
The idea that people in other parts of this country are all political extremists, so much so that people won’t even travel there, contributes to the division in this country. I’m a political person, I have very strong opinions, but that doesn’t mean I can discount every red state in America.
I didn’t see a single political bumper sticker in the nine hours I drove through the South, yet I see more MAGA bumper stickers on my ten minute drive to work in Louisville.
I acknowledge the fact that I can say this as a straight, white woman. Maybe I would feel differently if that weren’t the case. When I saw people walking around on campus, they offered their restaurant recommendations or their list of favorite things that I must see before I go.
You don’t have to interact with people and completely set aside politics. I’m just saying that if you perpetuate these stereotypes, you are still part of the problem in why there is so much division in America.
Get out of the bubble.
