ATL 125, Sec. 002
24 Oct 2000
Paper two, revised version
Source:
school/arts/paper2.draft2a.wpd
Bill Clinton went to Africa last month. Reactions to his visit were mixed. Now, this was not his first visit there, but he is the first president to travel there since 1978, and this was his second visit. In particular, two articles on his visit were very interesting. One appeared in The East African. It was an opinion piece. The other was an AP wire story that was featured on the front page of The Washington Afro-American, which is published in Washington, D.C. They both made reference to some of the same details of the visit, but each article drew different conclusions from it. The respective authors had different attitudes about the personal motives of Bill Clinton, the proper relationship of the U.S. president to the world, and the existing relationship between Africa and America, and, because of that difference, America needs to be more aware of African issues.
Mr. Betts viewed Mr. Clinton a basically a stick figure, while Ms. Ross (who wrote the piece for the Afro-American) viewed Bill Clinton a person with legitimate motives for his actions. Certainly the press release from which Ms. Ross drew some of her facts originated that bias, but her position as a citizen of this country must have helped as well. It is much easier to objectify people from foreign countries. We cannot blame Mr. Betts for falling into a trap that is common for people analysing the actions of other nations. He was also writing to a different audience, the people who are "awed by [Clinton's] presence and fail to present the African case properly." He had to demystify the idol in order to present his concerns about the situation effectively. It must be admitted that the other article was not the model of perfect empathy either. In addition, she was trying to follow standards of unbiased reporting. She even quoted Jesse Jackson giving out sentiments similar to Mr. Betts': "He is not a Santa Claus. He is a strategic partner. With him . . . you maintain your dignity and honor, both of which are non-negotiable."
Mr. Betts said "I agree that the US President is the most important person in the world today." Strangely enough, the Washington article said nothing of the sort, at least not in words. It did show a picture of Clinton wearing "a Nigerian garment reserved for royalty." (One might ask what the Founding Fathers would have thought of that; did Thomas Jefferson roll in his grave?) It seems that many residents of Africa view the US President as a very powerful man, one who can help them with many things if he just waves his pen. In this coutry, the president has traditionally been both an executive (carrying out the will of the People as codified by Congress) and a leader (bringing forth new ideas about how to operate the country or deal with international problems). In both capacities, his power, though significant, is limited. African-Americans do not support the president because of race brotherhood, but because they expect him to be an honest man who will stick with his previous attitudes and his party's platform and work toward the common good. In fact, much of our country's wealth is controlled by the wealthy, not by the government, and even less of it by the federal government. In his attempt to speak to all readers of his article and change the tone of African discourse, Mr. Betts made a statement about the US President that would be skeptically viewed, though not neccessarily denied, by most American citizens.
While Mr. Betts was saying that America should help Africa out of respect of fairness, the Washington article appealed to the American voter and tried to justify current policies. The counterargument is plausible. There are reasons to think that America does not need Africa. Most of the food we eat as Americans was not grown in Africa, but America provides significant amounts of food and other basic supplies to some poor African nations. Our long-distance calls do not go through Africa, but an Internet connection from Australia to Hong Kong over the UUnet network (which was once part of AT&T) will be routed through the US, and the same pattern may prevail in many officially intra-African telecommunications links. In Africa economists do their studies in dollars, not the local currency. In spite of all this, the United States does depend on Africa for some things. Many of the world's diamonds come from Africa. It seems that other useful things come from there as well. Mr. Betts manages a tea factory, and he reports that "Most buyers of such products are [sic] tea, coffee, cocoa and flowers come from these affluent nations. They purchase the products at a tenth of the final prices in their countries." On the other hand, the Washington Afro-American article spoke about the President being "empty-handed, without the full cease-fire for Burundi that would have been a fitting climax for his visit." Perhaps one thing that America wants from Africa is simply peace, so that our corporations can conduct business there, our religions can proselyte there, and our armies can quarter their forces there on the way to other trouble-spots in the world. Of course peace per se is a good thing for Africa, and the liberal individual should desire it, but President Clinton does not need that motivation to fulfill the duties of his office; he has simply to do that which will benefit the American people.
Because, as a generalization, no one understands Bill Clinton, and Africans don't understand the US President in his office, and neither Americans nor Africans fully understand how they depend on the other, both continents suffer. While Africa bears the brunt of this burden, this does not take away from the American citizen's obligation to understand these issues. In spite of Africa being such a large continent, I knew very little about it for much of my life. I knew early on that "the slaves" had come from Africa, and that the Portuguese went around its south end on the way to India. Later I realized that Africa has a diamond-mining industry with advanced machinery, but in reading the East African I found the first explicit statement of the existence of a railroad north of the north border of South Africa and south of the Mediterranean coast. One still hears mostly of tribes, and sees people in "tribal" garb (even though it's probably just cotton cloth cut and dyed in slightly different patterns than Americans wear these days), and never hears of an African university or space program or a native-African geology expedition. There are also many articles in print about African wildlife and land formations, but mostly from a foreign explorer's perspective. Where is the African scientist who can use African soil-bacteria to produce a miracle drug? Or, what forces are preventing him from existing and from being noticed in the American news? Are they the same forces that kept people from knowing that Bill Clinton had visited Africa, and that prompted some nations there to give him a better welcome than he is accustomed to when visiting the states of this republic?