A Welcome Lacking in New York

The flag of Burkina Faso, formerly known as Upper Volta. — René MacColl was a British journalist and author. 

If he, and the heads of new African nations found New Yorkers rude, what they found in Maryland was undoubtedly a shock: “In the segregated State of Maryland, diplomats from newly independent African nations suffered a series of indignities during the 1950s and early 1960s. While traveling through Maryland, on their way from the United Nations to the White House. Newspapers in their respective home countries, railed against American racism whenever a diplomat was ejected from a “whites only” establishment. The situation became so dire, the State Department was eventually forced to establish an agency just to deal with the discrimination against black diplomats. In an effort to solve the problem, the Kennedy administration argued that ending segregation was vital to winning the Cold War. Many believe this ultimately helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” — Etiquipedia, Etiquette, Civil Rights and Diplomacy

Manners In Manhattan

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES: At the start of the present session of the United Nations the representatives of some of the new African nations which were formerly French possessions — highly cultured men — were quoted in the press as complaining about the bad manners encountered on the part of New Yorkers. It is to be hoped that these gentleman, from Cameroon, Togoland, Upper Volta and elsewhere, were not harboring the illusion that this ill treatment was merely an outcropping of color prejudice. I can assure them that I, a white man, who visits New York from Europe several times every year in the course of my professional duties, invariably brace myself for a further dose of surliness, rudeness and a lack of consideration at the hands of the people of this city, as my plane comes in for a landing at Idlewild.

In fact, over the years I have become more or less inured to the deplorable manners of New Yorkers. Nowadays, I accept it as one of the many disagreeable facts of life. Probably, after a few further sessions of the U.N., the Africans will have learned to accept it too. I want to make it clear that this state of affairs applies only to New York among the cities of North America. I make no indictment of such places as San Francisco, Denver, Dallas, Des Moines, or Boston. Why this should be is to me a profound mystery. It seems a pity that in this great city, the back of the hand should remain the significant symbol and the snarl the generally accepted recognition signal. — René MacColl, New York, November 7, 1960

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia