Iowa is a nice place, don’t get me wrong. I went to high school and college there. Iowans I know don’t go out of their way to be racist, but most of them had exactly the same experiences in school I had.

We had TWO black kids in the entire large high school the whole time I attended it. And that’s not because the schools in my town were de facto segregated. It’s because those two kids were members of the only two black families in the whole area.

I think they liked Iowa. I never saw anyone being mean to them or expressing overt racism. But how isolating!

And for all the white kids in school? How could we expect them to understand issues that touch people of color when they’ve never ever known any people of color?

So, yeah — not the best place to elevate and magnify when it comes to selecting presidential candidates.

How could it be? Iowa is lovely in many ways, but it doesn’t represent our nation as a whole. Not even close.