Is Oklahoma Southern or Midwest? It’s Hot Dish vs Okra

Every few months the internet decides it is time to sort Oklahoma into a tidy little box again.

Southern or Midwest. Pick one.

Like we are a side dish at Thanksgiving and somebody needs to know whether to put us next to the hot dish or the fried okra. I'm not sure why we can't just be considered "Oklahoma" as a stand-alone and unique state in this union, so as the rest of the country demands an answer, I think it's pretty clear.

We Are Not Hot Dish

No disrespect to the Midwest, but nobody here grew up defending cream of mushroom casserole like it was family honor. We grew up defending fried okra. We say y’all without thinking about it. Opinion is more uh-pinion rather than oh-pinion. We sweeten our tea like we are trying to preserve it for winter. Our church culture, our small town rhythms, our front porch politics, they lean Southern whether we want to admit it or not.

Even the hard parts of our history point in that direction.

Before statehood, when we were still Indian Territory, several tribal nations were the last holdouts of slavery. Vastly different from the Southern Confederacy, it wasn't about cheap slave labor, but rather used for negotiations with the federal government after the Civil War. That may not be a comforting footnote, but it technically roots us in the same complicated Southern soil that states like Arkansas and Texas still wrestle with today.

Culturally, we tracked with the South in more ways than we probably realized. Our accents bend that way. Our food leans that way. Our music sure does. You do not have to drive far before you find a Baptist church on one corner and a Friday night rivalry that feels like a family reunion on the other.

The Midwest influence is here too. Wheat fields, wind, and practicality. You can see a little Kansas in the way western Oklahoma carries itself. But culturally, when the debate gets loud, we side with okra over hot dish almost every time.

It's Still Highly Debated

Personally, I still believe what I said last year. Oklahoma is Oklahoma. We are a crossroads with a weather problem and a football obsession. We are Braums runs after church and Friday night lights that feel like a weekly holiday. We are Choctaw County pine trees and Cimarron County dust in the same afternoon, as unique as any other location on Earth.

Oklahoma was stitched together out of some of the wildest events in American history. Land runs, forced removals, oil booms, military bases, the Dust Bowl, and people who famously jumped the gun to claim their piece of life in the last era of the Wild West. When we became the 46th state, we weren't sliding neatly into an existing category. We were building something new out of pieces that didn't fit.

Shout-Out No Man's Land!

So if you absolutely have to label us, Southern probably fits a little better than Midwest, but it doesn't exactly fit perfectly....

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