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Decoding 'Minnesota nice': A culture of kindness gives weight to words like 'weird'

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

As Governor Tim Walz continues to hit the campaign trail, there is a certain phrase you may be hearing a lot - Minnesota nice. It's a term that's deeply familiar to residents of the state. On one hand, it's kind of a stereotype that's exactly what it sounds like, says Rachel Hutton, a culture reporter for the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis.

RACHEL HUTTON: People in Minnesota are literally nice, meaning they're kind. They're polite. They will help you push your car out of a snowbank if you get stuck in the winter.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

On the other hand, she says, Minnesotans have a habit of understatement and a certain way of, well, avoiding confrontation.

HUTTON: And instead of being direct in your communication, you tend to be passive-aggressive.

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COREY BONNEMA: 'Cause I have a relative that when we're - you know, it's been a hot summer day, and she's in the car with me, she'll just say, is it hot in here, versus making a request to you. Please turn on the air conditioning.

KELLY: That is Corey Bonnema in an interview last year with KARE 11 News in Minneapolis. Bonnema and Jerilyn Veldof wrote "Minnesota Nice?: A Transplant's Guide To Surviving And Thriving In Minnesota." Veldof says that passive aggressiveness gives Minnesota nice a double meaning.

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JERILYN VELDOF: The shadow side of Minnesota nice is called Minnesota ice.

CHANG: For outsiders, it can be hard to pick up that subtlety. Even if something doesn't quite sound like an insult, it can have a hidden meaning.

HUTTON: You're at a potluck, and, you know, somebody has you tried their hot dish as sort of the - you know, the Minnesota stereotype example.

CHANG: Rachel Hutton again.

HUTTON: And there's something a little funky about it. And you would tell them, oh, that's different. Or you'd say, oh, it's interesting. And you wouldn't - you know, meanwhile, you're kind of surreptitiously sort of scraping, you know, the remains of your hot dish into the garbage. But you wouldn't want to say, you know, no, I don't like it.

CHANG: Hutton says, Tim Walz is a master of the understated insult. At a rally earlier this week, Walz said this about Donald Trump and JD Vance.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TIM WALZ: These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell. That's what you see.

HUTTON: Walz is going to use really harsh language that - in Minnesota speak, calling someone weird is - that's sort of going for the jugular. That's, like, a very harsh statement.

KELLY: Well, now that Walz has a national spotlight on him, we will be tracking more of that Minnesota nice and, yeah, Minnesota ice. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.