> I suspect if you make your way closer to the midwest you will meet less of these people, and more people who treat you like just another person and couldn't give a fuck how you identify.

As someone that grew up somewhere in the midwest (which isn't as homogenous as is often implied) and then moved to a stereotypically left-leaning coastal city, this was perhaps true in certain circumstances but definitely not others. I wouldn't bother with smaller towns/villages outside of the largest metropolitan areas (that aren't university towns) unless you want to feel prejudiced by a racial identity that's imposed on you, and reminded of that on a daily basis, but the same is true of these smaller towns in most states as well as countries in the west, in my experience. It's a bit idealistic to say that people in the midwest care less about how you identify if there are instead more that impose their own identity on you.