March 2008 Archives

I'm currently dropping in and out of Letter from America by Alistair Cooke.

The following passage from The Immigrant Strain, the first essay in the book and dated 6 May 1946, jumped off the page for obvious reasons:

If you feel baffled and alarmed at the prospect of differentiating one American type from another, you can take heart. You have more hope of success than Americans, who shuffle through every stereotype of every foreign culture as confidently as they handle the family's pack of cards. Americans are not particularly good at sensing the real elements of another people's culture. It helps them to approach foreigners with carefree warmth and an animated lack of misgiving. It also makes them, on the whole, poor administrators on foreign soil. They find it almost impossible to believe that poorer peoples, far from the Statue of Liberty, should not want in their heart of hearts to become Americans. If it should happen that America, in its new period of world power, comes to do what every other world power had done: if Americans should have to govern large numbers of foreigners, you must expect that Americans will be well hated before they are admired for themselves.

Apart from the now-dated reference to families shuffling cards badly — families no longer shuffle cards much — Cooke's prophecy seems strikingly accurate today.