Attwood on Africa

...The object was a meeting between President Kennedy and Fidel Castro...

...delegate to United Nations—held discussions with Cuba's U.N...

...What made the Africans angry...

...No doubt it was crass to record for public view the common knowledge of the specialist...

...Attwood on Africa The Reds and the Blacks,, by William Attwood...

...The Reds and the Blacks is a book about his "personal adventure" in both countries...

...Reviewed by Immanuel Wallerstein Journalist William Attwood was sent by President Kennedy as ambassador to Guinea and by President Johnson as ambassador to Kenya...

...Africans may suspect that Attwood has shown much empathy but little sympathy for their problems and their plight...

...In French-speaking Guinea the authorities did not ban it but were irritated with the book...

...The book was promptly banned in Kenya...

...Superficially, it is not an easy question to answer, since the book is full of praise for the men in power in Guinea and Kenya...

...I believe it is important to try to solve this puzzle, for it is the prototype of a standard problem...

...After that, Attwood "was told that the Cuban exercise would probably be put on ice for a while—which it was and where it has been ever since...

...If one wants a candid picture of how American diplomacy successfully operates in Africa today, I cannot think of a better book than this...

...It is, relatively speaking, optimistic about the future...

...It says things are going reasonably well in both countries...

...I suppose what ultimately irritated the Africans the most in these passages was the underlying tinge of contentment with which they are suffused...

...Attwood explains what he went to Africa to do, how he went about doing it, how leading Africans reacted to what he was doing, and why ultimately he was reasonably successful...

...The people who have reacted most negatively to his narrative are those with whom he had cooperated the most...

...the United States is "not interested in imposing any ideology on Guinea or in making it an American satellite...

...No doubt Attwood did not endear himself with his thumbnail, Tim^-like, and often unflattering sketches of Africans he did not really like...

...There is another reason to read this book...

...Infused by the New Frontier spirit, it tells its story most indiscreetly...

...No doubt Attwood hit the nail on the head when he explained the African reaction to the Stanleyville airdrop: "Even more galling to the educated African was the shattering of so many of his illusions—that Africans were now masters of their own continent . . . that a black man with a gun was the equal of a white man with a gun...

...And the dispensers of this intervention respond by saying, as does Attwood, that...

...It is for the pages in which Attwood recounts his brief involvement with Cuba...

...They were at the point of discussing an agenda when the President was assassinated...

...No doubt, too, Attwood hit the nail again when he reproached his fellow Americans: "What first struck me was how little my fellow Americans seemed to appreciate the way the world has changed in the last few years—and to what extent the changes have been in our favor...

...American "liberal intervention" in the affairs of the world is most often wanted avidly by individuals who deny they request it, out of fear or shame or discomfort...

...Through the intermediary of the Guinean ambassador to Cuba, Attwood—temporarily a U.S...

...The author may well be the first to be puzzled...

...Ambassador, Carlos Lechuga...

...He is said to have been a fairly popular ambassador to both countries...