Behind Bandung:

...In many cities, North as well as South, African students are obliged to seek quarters in the Negro section...

...When American diplomats or businessmen living abroad follow Western patterns, frequent the exelusive clubs and schools set up by the English in India or the French in Indo-China, the Asian views it as a psychological continuation of the old colonialism...

...Even economically, there is little common ground...

...The strongest indication that the memory of oppression still rankled and provided ground for fresh fears was given in what they wanted to talk about at Bandung and with whom...

...Attempting to analyze only the psychological reasons, it would be easy to overstate the role that race feeling has played...

...The Asian-African bloc in the UN gave fervent support to the Marshall Islanders when they came to petition the world organization to stop U.S...

...They constitute some of the major factors which have beclouded Asia's image of America, and throw light on why Asian confidence in the U.S...

...India has become a leading nation of the world, yet the bitterness bred of discrimination persists in the present adult generation...

...Although most would be classified as "underdeveloped," they represent every degree of economic development from the feudalism of the Middle East to the industrialism of Japan...

...This is not easy...

...to consider social, economic and cultural problems...

...To these central questions, there are many answers on many levels...

...The characteristic Asian reaction to this would appear to be, "What can you expect—after the U.S...

...On the economic side, President Eisenhower has made an encouraging move by hastening his $2-bilIion-Aid to Asia bill to Congress while Bandung is still in progress...

...Why is it we are labeled "imperialists" when the aggressions of the Russians go unnoticed...

...atomic experiments on their atolls...

...As a Canadian who flew to Asia recently wrote home: "Miraculous the way every part of the world is within quick reach of every other part, but what a difference between the parts...

...More recently, she has been associated with a research project initiated by the late Walter White to analyze foreign attitudes on U.S...

...on the other hand, some go away with painful memories of personal humiliation...

...Modern transportation just means that all of the gulfs that divide us are crammed closer together...

...All but the last—the only one which Europeans still govern?are present at Bandung...

...Why is it, we ask, that Asia is turning to Russia for the very thing that we have homegrown par excellence...

...South Africa was barred on the grounds of its racial policy...

...The race sensitivity described so brilliantly by E. M. Forster in Passage to India is still operative in judgments about white men...

...Such racial discrimination, in Asian and African eyes, is all too reminiscent of colonial rule and its implications...

...Take the tragi-comical incident of the streetcars sent by America to South Korea...

...They point out that the only victims of the A- and H-bombs have been non-white, even the accidental victims of fall-out...

...is compromised by a fearful landlady here, a recalcitrant barber there...

...Finally, Asians are bitter about America's atomic policies...

...Four months earlier, Pakistan had signed the U.S.-initiated SEATO pact which Nehru had denounced as "war-provoking...

...The terrain is thus rougher per square hour...

...Our voting in the UN reflected this...

...It would be an oversimplification to call it a unity based on skin color, but it would be myopic not to see that virtually all these countries have known forms of political and/or economic exploitation by nations and individuals who happened to be "white...

...Diana Tead spent four years in Paris working for UNESCO, in the course of which she authored a booklet, What Is Race...

...Despite behind-the-scenes U.S...

...Smartly timed, it will demonstrate America's desire to help solve Asia's twin problems of poverty and economic stagnation which are under discussion at the Conference...

...At a time when the Soviets are parading African, North Korean and Mongolian students at Prague's Charles University in a pageant of apparent racial harmony, the U.S...

...and 25 other nations, mostly European, abstained...

...Among these men were the strong bonds of those who have known colonial oppression—oppression on a political and economic level of their nation's life, oppression on a personal level of social and racial discrimination...

...Twenty-five nations were invited: Afghanistan, Nepal, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Liberia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Yemen, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Jordan...

...Hostility to European colonialism is unifying factor amid diversity of Afro-Asian countries BEHIND BANDUNG By Diana Tead THIS WEEK, the leaders of 29 Asian and African countries are sitting around the conference table at Bandung, Indonesia for what is clearly a historic meeting...

...On all these issues, the Asian, African and Latin American countries, joined usually by the Soviet bloc, voted on one side, the European countries on the other...

...policy on colonial issues on the horns of an uncomfortable dilemma...

...Happily our best diplomats have become aware of these nuances...

...is at its lowest ebb...

...It includes nations which are independent, a few which are desperately struggling toward self-determination, those which belong to the United Nations and those which would like to, those belonging to the British Commonwealth and those in the U.S...

...The five Asian leaders who initiated it met last December in the Indonesian town of Bogor to decide on the invitation list...

...Asians have watched our votes on such issues as investigating South African race-segregation laws, Tunisian-Moroccan independence, Indonesia's claim to Western New Guinea, and support of the Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development (SUNFED) Which would increase aid to underdeveloped countries...

...technological development, from which has sprung the highest standard of living for the common man in the world's history...

...It embraces the long-standing enmity of China and Japan, the squabbling of the Arab League nations, the bitter warring differences between Hindu and Moslem nations...

...What is the basis for unity amid this diversity...

...If our official attitudes on colonialism have been in the goldfish bowl of the United Nations, our personal attitudes on face have been subject to equally close scrutiny wherever Americans have come to live among non-white people...

...And Asians have been heard to ask seriously whether the United States would really drop bombs on Russians, "white" racially though "red" politically...

...cast its vote with the Europeans...

...But gaining Asian-African confidence is a matter not only of financial aid, but of understanding in the deepest sense...

...Whatever the outcome, the meeting is a new departure from the usual international gatherings of recent years...

...Chester Bowles's sending his children to an Indian school has become a classic example of a break with the old tradition...

...It was not so long ago that America was regarded as the champion of dependent peoples with nationalist ambitions...

...The actions and attitudes of the men at Bandung must be understood in the light of their desires and frustrations, of their traditions, history and psychological makeup...

...Convening in the palace that, symbolically, only a few years ago was the residence of the Dutch Governor-General, Nehru of India, U Nu of Burma, Mohammed Ali of Pakistan, Sir John Kote-lawala of Ceylon and Sastroamidjojo of Indonesia discussed plans for Bandung, the first Asian conference since these countries emerged from colonial domination...

...An American reporter asked the Asian delegate how his country could accept help from Soviet satellites, themselves violators of human rights...

...Americans are dismayed that our prestige in Asia today is so low...

...Confronted as we are by this vicious circle of cause and effect, we must take note of these currently prevalent Asian views...

...pressure on behalf of Asian-African interests (on Great Britain to withdraw her troops from Suez, on France to negotiate with Tunisia and Morocco), we are judged by our public position and our votes at the UN...

...His reply was pertinent to more than the UN resolution: "If the Western powers took a more decent stand in these matters, we would not have to count on the Soviet bloc...

...After flaming speeches against discrimination, the Soviet bloc cast its vote with the Asian-African group...

...The Indonesian case for taking over West New Guinea is not strong...

...In short, who started the segregation...

...and to explore ways of contributing to world peace...

...Pakistan was thus committed to the Western bloc, while India, Burma and Indonesia remained firmly neutral...

...On one thing everyone has agreed: The "uncommitted nations" of Asia are critically important to America, economically and psychologically...

...For all, there is an inevitable psychological association between "colonialism" or "imperialism" and the doctrine of racial superiority...

...Disparaging voices have been raised, both East and West, in reaction to the conference...

...The intensification of the cold war, and America's priority commitment to its European allies in NATO, placed U.S...

...This is the first of several articles we will publish on the Bandung parley...

...John Foster Dulles, arriving to attend the SEATO meeting in Bangkok, called the Asian-African conference "a new doctrine of segregation the peoples of Asia segregated from the peoples of the West...

...On the one hand, America is attracting an increasing number of non-white students each year...

...Although the participants represent more than half of the world's population, there is not a single "white" face around the Bandung table...

...In their eyes, our previously high moral position has been a casualty of the cold war...

...But, until Bandung, we in America have underestimated its importance and have, by default, let the Communists take the initiative in manipulating racial tensions to their own clearly-defined ends...

...To be sure, this type of "segregation" is haphazard, but there is nothing haphazard about our immigration laws, based, as everyone knows, on arbitrary racial classifications...

...And why does the basic concept on which democracy operates, the dignity and worth of the individual human being, seem to lose out in the ideological marketplace to collectivist ideas subordinating the individual...

...Even here at home where we have made notable progress, symbolized most dramatically by the Supreme Court anti-segregation decision, our antiquated folkways get in the way of relations with non-white visitors...

...The latest, the Walter-McCarran Act, allows a hundred Asians a year to enter this country and cuts to a trickle the flow of British West Indians of African descent...

...Philippines, Japan, Laos, Cambodia, Communist China, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Gold Coast and the Central African Federation...

...to advance mutual interests...

...Evidence from Scientists...

...Hardly a way to impress the future leaders of Africa with American enlightenment...

...Formosa, North and South Korea, and Israel were excluded as too controversial...

...These five men, leaders of countries independent only since World War II, came to Bogor from different positions on the chessboard of international political alliances...

...The sad fact is that racial attitudes at home have not always been the best preparation for dealing with "colored" nations abroad...

...The U.S...

...race discrimination and the international impact of those attitudes...

...In every case, the U.S...

...Not all colonial issues are clear cases of right and wrong...

...That the Indians welcomed the gesture with loud acclaim indicates how much it was the exception rather than the rule...

...voting record in the UN, the discriminatory McCarran Act, your commitments to the European colonial powers, your emphasis on military security rather than on economic aid to us...

...But at Bogor political differences were submerged in favor of a more fundamental cohesiveness...

...One of the fundamental questions raised by Bandung is: Will the sense of color unity be a strong enough factor to bridge ideological gaps and constitute the free nations of Asia as a negotiating force between Communist China and the United States...

...sphere of influence...

...In the immediate postwar years, the United States, by votes at the UN and practical measures outside, supported Indonesian efforts to gain freedom from the Dutch...

...To top it all, the inclusion of Communist China and North Vietnam has the group straddling the hottest schism of all —the three blocs, Western, neutralist and Communist, into which the whole world is divided...

...Far from an oversight, this omission reflects the purpose of the conference...

...The point here, however, is not the merits of each issue but how our actions look to the Asians and Africans...

...The gift was hailed with pomp and ceremony, flags flying, goodwill speeches for the unveiling —when suddenly it was found that the streetcars were marked "for white only" on one entrance, "for colored" on the other...

...Including the five sponsoring nations, the group represents a curious collection of incongruities...

...Symbolic of Soviet success even with the non-Communist world was the remark made by the delegate of an Asian country friendly to America, after the UN vote on race segregation in South Africa...

...In addition to the problems of special interest mentioned above, the Conference was "To promote good will and cooperation among the Asian and African peoples...

...Many have known as much as three centuries of Western domination...