Tarheels and Badgers

OF THE FIFTY STATES, WHICH IS THE BEST? WHICH THE WORST? Where, in between, does each of the others stand? Rating the states is an intellectual game that journalists, reformers, and social scientists have been playing for some time. The most recent and most elaborate of the ratings, one that purports to show differences in the quality of life, puts California first, Colorado second, Wisconsin twenty-first, and North Carolina forty-second.1 Now, I was born and raised in Colorado and have also lived in each of those other three states. If I were called upon to rate the four, I would put North Carolina or Wisconsin at the top, Colorado next, and California below that. There must be something wrong with me. Or maybe there is something wrong with the rating system. Whether good or bad, better or worse, every state has a unique character and a unique reputation, as we are all aware. Some of the states are more distinctive than others, and two of the most distinctive, it seems to me, are Wisconsin and North Carolina. Though these two are comparable in size with respect to both area and numbers, it would be hard to imagine a pair of states with less of basic character in common. To mention only ethnic make-up, the one state is among the whitest, with a tiny proportion of Negroes, and yet it is also among the most diverse, so many of its settlers having come from various countries of Europe. The other has a sizable black population, but it has received proportionally

Geography · Political science · American History and Culture · History · School Choice and Performance