Who Is More Normal About Immigration? Republicans Or A Fancy Etiquette Columnist From 1952?

The answer ... well, you can probably guess.

On Monday, I pulled out some of my old etiquette books in order to discern the proper protocol for reacting to the cancer diagnosis of an enemy. While there was no helpful advice for that particular situation, I did end up flipping through Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette for an entirely normal amount of time and found some pretty interesting material that felt surprisingly relevant for our time. Especially given all the Make America Great *Again* nonsense. After all, it was written, originally, in 1952 (I have the 1963 version).

I am a bigger fan of etiquette and the idea of etiquette and graciousness than one might presume of a lady currently wearing large heart-shaped earrings that read “Eat The Rich,” and I think we could use more of it. I’m not talking about using the right forks or raising a pinky while drinking tea (actually quite gauche!) so much as I believe that certain aspects of it could do a lot to reduce the social anxiety from which everyone seems to suffer these days — especially for those less adept at picking up social cues.

I’m also a little bit obsessed with Amy Vanderbilt herself, for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact she gives me the only opportunity I’ve ever had to use the word “defenestrated” in a sentence. Because of how she died when she took a bunch of pills and defenestrated herself for unknown reasons. I mean, obviously it’s very sad but kind of an ironic way to go for an expert on etiquette.

A far more fun fact is that her other book, Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cook Book featured illustrations from one Andrew Warhol.

Neat, huh?

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That being said, there is a lot of crazy shit in here. Our gal Amy recommends, for instance, eating corn on the cob by seasoning and eating one row at a time, which, as much as I do enjoy corn, seems like actual torture. You would be there for hours! She also has many hot tips on situations I will literally never be in, such as what to say when one’s child starts smoking corn silk or “Your Audience With The Pope” (though I imagine I’d still do better than JD Vance).

However, she’s also surprisingly chill at times. I was actually, specifically, rather pleasantly surprised to read her take on immigrants.

Granted, this was written in 1952 and therefore there are some rather outdated terms and understandings of history, but her take on immigrants is a hell of lot more decent and generous than what one hears nowadays from people who wish it was 1952.

She writes:

Every generation has its immigrants. Many more of us are descendants of Irish who migrated here during the potato famine in the nineteenth century, of Italians who came to supply our labor pool or bolster our artisan class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of early Dutch settlers dissatisfied with opportunities at home and who came to trade and colonize in New Amsterdam. We are all, no matter how impressive our family trees, descended from immigrants of one kind or the other, if we are Americans. Even the American Indian is now known to have emigrated here from Asia. Millions of us are the children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those who took refuge here to escape political, social or economic upheavals in their own lands or who fled from religious persecution. The Pilgrim fathers, now so revered socially as ancestors, were the first refugees, fleeing religious persecution, just as in the twentieth century refugees from Hitler - Protestants, Catholics and Jews - sought not only the right to worship as they please among us but the very chance to stay alive.

The Pilgrims faced the Indians, who, being here first, resented any encroachment on their hunting grounds. Every new settler today has us to face- the entrenched Americans, who, like the Indian tribes, forget sometimes that they came (or their grandfathers or great-grandfathers) to this land of opportunity because, for some reason or other. things were not good at home. It is only natural for every man to regard the stranger, the possible economic encroacher, with a wary eye. But we need to remember our own sources and realize that the vigor and progress of the country is stimulated by each such influx of new Americans, who bring with them talents, trades, ambition, and even wealth America can use.

Let's examine some of our attitudes toward refugees in our century.

One hears the criticism “Why do they all have to live in one neighborhood — all the Italians, all the Poles, the Scandinavians, all the French, the Germans, the the Mexicans, the Cubans, the Puerto Ricans, in tight little settlements?" The answer is that our ancestors, even if they came here at the time of the founding of our country, tended to do the same thing for reasons of solidarity. The melting pot that is America doesn't immediately gobble up the new citizen. Any American who was born abroad must, of necessity, have mixed feelings about his new homeland. The old living patterns, morals, social habits, and language are all part of him, and it is his children or perhaps his grandchildren who will first have the feeling of being uncomplicatedly "real” Americans.

Even after generations of assimilation there tends to be this gathering together of Americans with like backgrounds. The Irish in Boston, the Germans in St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Chicago the Italians and Jews and dozens of other ethnic groups in New York, the Cubans in Miami, the Scandinavians in the Midwest. the Pennsylvania "Dutch,” (really German) in Pennsylvania. Newcomers quite understandably, gravitate toward these centers, where they can hear their own language, eat their own food, go to their own houses of worship. and receive assistance in their adjustment to a new and strange–and often unfriendly–land.

It is true that the young do move out and into other circles, through marriage or business opportunities, but it is human and understandable that the older and less adventurous often prefer to make their way in a more familiar atmosphere. We should all remember that, no matter how American we are now, our ancestors, even if they were English speaking, had their own problems of adjustment here too- physical, social, and economic. Even well-bred English who settle here today feel our hostility or experience our ridicule of their manners and customs—as any English-born bride of an American can tell you. So it isn't language that the principal difficulty at all. It is just the perversity of human nature We all hate to move over, as others had to move over for us.

This all seems rather obvious to me, really. It probably seems obvious to you as well. But there’s just something sort of soothing about seeing that take from someone not only from such a long time ago, but someone who really was so very focused on graciousness and being a good host. I’ve always found it odd that people (still!) have such a chip on their shoulder about people from other countries holding on to their culture or living in areas full of people from the same place they’re from. What does it take away from you? Don’t all transplants feel a little better when we meet someone from our home state?

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I don’t know. Something about this just gave me hope that maybe we’re just living through a particularly bad and fucked up time and that, at some point, we’ll pull ourselves out of it. Amy Vanderbilt was hardly a radical, but she was a thoughtful person who cared about how her words and actions made other people feel, and sometimes that’s really the thing that matters.