For one who believes that international understanding, co-operation and friendship among peoples must be based on fair and honest dealings and on mutual respect, America, Their America is a most welcome book. It is an important commentary on contemporary American society, and especially on the massive efforts of the United States policy-makers to make friends and influence people abroad. This book should be read by Africans wishing to learn about America. Americans, too, should profit from it. If Americans would learn from what the author has to say, they would save themselves and others much unnecessary embarrassment. Were such the case, JP would be paying great tribute to the Parvin Program of Princeton University and to his American hosts.

Painfully struck by the continuing exploitation and oppression of black Americans, JP could not help admitting to himself, as he ‘entered the heart of the establishment, that America is a white country, with blacks merely there on terms worse than sufferance. For those who understand the profound tragedy of Americans of African descent in the United States, the fact that the ‘Negro people will continue for several decades to occupy … the position of the unwanted child who, having been brought for a visit, must remain for the rest of his life’, is not too harsh a conclusion. Moreover, America is not only a white man’s country but also, according to the late American sociologist C. Wright Mills, a society dominated by a ‘power elite’, consisting of an interlocking directorate of the ‘top brass’ of the giant business corporations, the government, and the military. Lastly America is obsessed with sex.

But it is not these observations alone (even if we regard them as abstractions) which make the book important and interesting. Rather it is the author’s ability to pierce through the fog of official propaganda and stage-management into the ‘heart of the matter’, and his reactions to America’s cold war ‘struggle for the minds of men’ in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

JP does not theorise; instead he takes the reader through many varied situations which poignantly reveal ‘their America’. The reader travels with the author to the scenes of his experiences. He moves from the ‘holy recess and study’ of Princeton University to the small town newspaper office, and from there to the mammoth Washington Post establishment; from professional gatherings and conferences with State Department officials to the Supreme Court of the United States; from Afro-American communities and organisations to private American homes. He meets African students, and ponders the consequences of uprooting youngsters from their countries for a prolonged period of study in the United States. He questions the effects on the development of African universities of siphoning off the most promising students for undergraduate courses in the United States. The author’s reactions to these and other situations are fascinatingly recorded. No doubt, these reactions reveal as much about the American hosts as their maverick guest whose qualities of mental independence, sensitivity, and insight into men and matters are here in full play. The result is an illuminating book, written with superb clarity and spiced with touches of poetry.

It would be a mistake to attribute JP’s reactions purely to personal idiosyncracies, for the problems he came up against transcend his personal dilemma. It is the problem of white America, deeply rooted in the American historical experience and ideology, and rendered even more pronounced today (and unbearable to the outsider) by the necessities of the cold war struggle for the minds of men. From its founding, Americans, especially Anglo-Americans, have thought of themselves as God’s ‘chosen people’. They feel that they have established for themselves a society, the like of which has never been known or may yet be the luck of any other nation. Because of this belief, they have sought to compel all other groups in the country to assimilate into the specifically Anglo-American ‘ideal’ of the good life or the good society. For Americans, writes JP, ‘revolution of any … type is a state and an ideal already completely and permanently achieved at home by their founding and fighting fathers several centuries back.’

Because Americans believe theirs to be an approximation of the ideal society, they believe also that they have their countries for a prolonged period of study in the United States. He questions the effects on the development of African universities of siphoning off the most promising students for undergraduate courses in the United States. The author’s reactions to these and other situations are fascinatingly recorded. No doubt, these reactions reveal as much about the American hosts as their maverick guest whose qualities of mental independence, sensitivity, and insight into men and matters are here in full play. The result is an illuminating book, written with superb clarity and spiced with touches of poetry.

It would be a mistake to attribute JP’s reactions purely to personal idiosyncracies, for the problems he came up against transcend his personal dilemma. It is the problem of white America, deeply rooted in the American historical experience and ideology, and rendered even more pronounced today (and unbearable to the outsider) by the necessities of the cold war struggle for the minds of men. From its founding, Americans, especially Anglo-Americans, have thought of themselves as God’s ‘chosen people’. They feel that they have established for themselves a society, the like of which has never been known or may yet be the luck of any other nation. Because of this belief, they have sought to compel all other groups in the country to assimilate into the specifically Anglo-American ‘ideal’ of the good life or the good society. For Americans, writes, JP. ‘revolution of any … type is a state and an ideal already completely and permanently achieved at home by their founding and fighting fathers several centuries back.’

Because Americans believe theirs to be an approximation of the ideal society, they believe also that they have a mission to extend the benefit of their experience even to the most unwilling of the ‘human group’. Consequently, those who fail to accept the American experience as being valid for all humanity are regarded, at best, as ignorant, at worst, as immoral. These attitudes lie at the root of intolerance at home and the demand for conformity to their economic and political ideas abroad. This intolerance, reinforced by her present economic and military power, breeds ­diabolical arrogance in America’s relations with other nations. JP became aware of these inflexibly intolerant attitudes, clashed with them head on, and unwilling to be ­ideologically assimilated (as a black man he could not have expected to be socially assimilated), he was regarded as an ungrateful guest by his host. He was unceremoniously booted out of the United States.

Professor E. U. Essien-Udom

Department of Political Science

University of Ibadan

Introduction

‘You sure have a big chip on your shoulder!’ I was often admonished by Americans, not least by the most unprivileged of them.

Being undilutedly black, and coming from a so-called undeveloped country and continent, I confess I must have felt and probably shall remain bitter at and jealous of all that passes and sells so loudly as western and white civilization, achieved as likely as not at the expense of the dark. And this was so with me going through Europe and England; America, my destination, just happened to be the limit, both of the dream and of the actuality of that achievement crying pride and power everywhere.

I should however like to state with all the emphasis and candour at my command that I went to the United States of America with a mind wide open and unpredisposed to pre-judge, as well as with a sensibility neutral and on the ready to record and register all that came within reach of it. For me, hearing and hearsay were not going to be enough. I not only wanted to see things for myself while in America, I was determined right from when I jumped on the last plane in Lagos for New York that I would smell things out for myself, and made certain I would touch and taste to the full all that my bounteous host had to offer my kind. What follows therefore, the charitable might say, is not so much the story of my host and his incredibly sumptuous establishment but the jaundiced and unsavoury account of the responses and reactions of one difficult, hypercritical character and palate, who, presented with unusually rich grapes in a dish of silver and gold, took deprecatory bites, and churlishly spat everything out and in the face of all. Perhaps so. Now that I have got the whole fare out of my system, I feel so much better that I went through with the experience and the opportunity of that visit to America.

Undoubtedly, I proved myself a most awkward guest – so much so I have myself thought of simply calling this story ‘The Awkward Guest’ or ‘Chips on my Shoulders’. I suppose this would have given my detractors and critics some measure of delight and satisfaction. But I have plumped for the present title for the simple reason that this is the kaleidoscope of America as I caught it in one academic year. The screen and view I hold up may appear warped and wanting correction, although I venture to insist the fault, if really it does not lie in the panorama itself, might very well be one shared by the operators who did the projecting of the pageant.

Otherwise Princeton and America were most generous and kind to me. Too much so, perhaps! Representative of both was the ex-Army Colonel and lecturer at Princeton, Dr Robert Van de Velde, together with his beautiful and spirited wife Barbara who advised and assisted him all the time. I had got myself invited to Princeton without knowing that it was through the sponsorship of two Nigerians then at Harvard and Princeton, namely Lawrence Ekpebu and my cousin Henry T. Bozimo. An American top advertisement man Richard Detwiler, a friend of mine, who some years before I had taken, as a civil servant, on an official tour of Western Nigeria, backed both boys up, and possibly more than any other person did a lot, by way of a regular correspondence with me in Nigeria, to persuade me to go to Princeton. And once there, the Colonel took me into his safe and firm keeping. A role like that instantly conjures up all that is crotchety, bilious, and grumpy. My Colonel, however, was quite the proverbial fairy father to me, a genie out of an Arabian tale. I had only to rub the lamp for him to emerge, large and unruffled, all set to perform the apparently impossible. Did I want to do a tour of the theaters from Broadway to the states and schools? Shake hands and dine with a live millionaire? Talk with a scientist who at Alamo had helped to build the split atom into what is today the greatest scare man has known since childhood? Or was it in the limelight of some film celebrity I would like to walk? Indeed, I only had to name my pet wish day by day, and the old war-horse was rearing to run me there. And didn’t I, like the spoilt one I was, ride him hard!

True, I got thrown eventually, long before I saw all the wide, changing course of America, all expertly charted to by-pass the barricaded South, swing through the thirsty deserts and reserves of the Mid-West, past the fuming furnaces and forges up on the Great Lakes, and so West, down to the fabulous sunny terrains and gallops of California. But curse as much as I may still, I do not blame the Colonel for his impatience at last and my unexpected fall. Without riding the image to death, I guess I am what they call a heavy-footed fellow with an excitable turn of temper, and one therefore that would make at all times a poor jockey for the most trusty horse and sanguine backers and owner upon any field. I should be glad of another try!

Nor am I so naïve I want to suggest here a sharp undiscriminating picture of white against black, although Americans in spite of themselves do sometimes help to make it appear so. I did not come in contact exclusively with the politician, the salesman, or with the ­chauvinist-capitalist. The first would shake hands even with a week-old child, the second would sell the unemployed the latest ­washing-machine on the market, and the third turns every acre of his God-given land into a fighting frontier against all-comers. Of course, these characters are prominent on the turbulent American scene. It comes therefore as a relief to run into others on the field, who, no less native and loyal to the soil, do not clap you on the back, nor offer to sell you the underpants you already wear, nor challenge you to a fight on the spot for refusing to be converted to the cause of their particular clan and camp. I remember many such with respect. But I found the other side more important; so if the picture of America that you want to see is a rosy one, you had better stop reading this book now.

J. P. Clark

University of Ibadan

Ibadan

Nigeria

1

Initiations

At midnight one Wednesday night in May I fled the United States of America. Why that hour? Why the haste?

Having been shown the setting sun as I had been by my hosts at Princeton there was nothing more to do but take to the road, however dark, difficult and cold.

A very close circle of friends had stayed up that Wednesday night to see me off. Suddenly, Ruth Stone who was the life of it broke into a high, uneasy laugh: ‘So the midnight flight is significant, after all! It’s a reflection on your stay and experiences in the US!’

‘Not a bad image!’ I joined her. There we sat all six of us in the waiting room at Idlewild, now Kennedy Airport, Ruth and her husband Sam whose beautiful home at Great Neck on Long Island had its doors open to me come last or first train, Israel Rosenfield and Catherine Temeson, both of them young lovers and my constant companions in and out of college; and there was Chinua Achebe, my friend and fellow Nigerian writer, also then on some ticket to America, unlike mine just ended, a right and proper one from UNESCO.

None cared for any drink or talk although I ordered a beer and insisted the others might at least each try a glass of cold water. So we just sat, some with knees touching and not quite looking each other in the eyes, until the insistent voice on the public address equipment said it was time passengers for London on the BOAC flight reported to their seats. That brought us all bolt-upright to our feet, and Ruth, who had got up this farewell group and given me some of my best days in the States, said simply: ‘So you really are going, JP?’ That must have been the tenth time of her asking inside ten minutes, but we all felt the urgency, and shook hands briefly, unable to talk. ‘I’ll be seeing you and Sam in July – in Nigeria,’ I managed at last over my shoulders. ‘And you, Israel, and Cat, make sure you enrol in the Peace Corps so you too can come over. Nigeria needs doctors and teachers.’ And to Chinua I said: ‘Countryman, come home soon; don’t let them get you!’

They had all pressed after me past the Customs barriers, waving now and subdued somewhat, so that as the last doors shut between us, a certain screen seemed to spring into a place it had no right to be, and many times more oppressive than any wall in Berlin or ancient Benin. In that general nervousness I found, when I began belting myself in my seat, that I had left behind my overcoat. But, as the stewards said, there was little that could be done, except have it sent after me which they did, for already the huge vessel had begun moving, and before I knew there was any real racing going on, we were already off our feet, clear into the vast arms of blind space and night, forming yet another luminous body in the heavens. Below, the indeterminate sprawl of New York, a city with a dark heart, lay blinking and writhing with a thousand and one eyes like some mammoth centipede bruised upon the ground.

‘What did I say,’ giggled a middle-aged man at my elbow, ‘no crashing with any plane I hop!’

‘Shut up, honey!’ his wife fixed him with a stare faster than all belts. There was scattered laughter down and up the corridor from among their friends and fellow passengers, all of them sporting placards labelled ‘playboy’ across their breasts, and no doubt going to do Europe, boys and bunnies all together. Turning away from the lot, I tried to engage myself with the new copy of Ubu Roi that Cat and Israel had given me as a parting gift only an hour or so back. But breathless as is that character’s career, it could not win away my mind from the friends I had just left in the world’s other half, faces which I felt I might well never see again.

Not quite a year before, I had alighted at the same airport on a broad milling afternoon. There was nobody at the ramp and waiting room to wave me in except the Immigration people. At first, they were surly and thorough, as expected, showing more than a fast hand and tongue as they ripped and riffled through my spare luggage.

‘Any drugs?’

‘No.’

‘Any diamonds?’

‘No.’

‘What about gifts for friends?’

‘None.’

‘And money – how much have you got on you?’

Then one of them, with cap drawn over one eye, looked my passport over a second time, and without warning, hit me across the shoulder, quite viciously. Now, what terrible discovery has he made? I wondered. But I shouldn’t have worried, for the fellow hit me another one and asked aloud with a big laugh: ‘So you got a Fellowship to Princeton!’

‘Boy, oh boy!’ chimed in his colleague, ‘You know that’s one of our top colleges!’

And instantly they all made me plenty welcome.

‘Call any cab out there and it will take you safe into the city,’ one offered.

‘But be sure you fix the fare first before going,’ his mate took over. ‘And go straight to Penn Station if you are going direct to Princeton. It’s right on the other side – in New Jersey State.’ All of which advice they offered completely free of charge, and when I said ‘Thank you’ they all answered in one voice: ‘Oh, you’re welcome!’

Incidentally, I had no need of a taxi cab, jumping a lift off some Nigerian diplomat at the United Nations. There were three of us in the car besides him, all of us Nigerians. First was the friend he had come to collect, a young lawyer, fresh from London and going to Yale for another year’s study. The other, it turned out, was a civil servant from Lagos enrolled on the same programme that was taking me to Princeton. Three of us newcomers felt rather lost in the capacious holds of the car. ‘You dare not, as a public servant, take this home with you unless of course you want to set up yourself against the politicians in power and their retainers,’ I teased the diplomat. ‘Just look out there,’ was all he said as we swept into the multiple cross current of cars. His, I came to concede, was anything but spacious and serpentine compared with the average vehicle on the road, but then at home it would be ostentatious living all the same, as only politicians and their conmen can afford. ‘You see, you are in the United States,’ he said. It was a reminder I was to hear rubbed into me again and again like salt over a sore for several months to come.

New York City was too much with me driving into it that open and warm afternoon. Of course, I had expected to see steel and glass structures, all shining bright, rise slender and beautiful before my eyes. But what struck me immediately was the dust and smut covering the face of New York, and one not exactly that of the ages as has settled for good upon a place like London or Paris. At first, it was hard for me to place or breathe, perhaps because strange, primitive pictures were at that time stirring in my mind. For example, I had for quite some time the uncanny vague feeling of being borne in a boat into the heart of some heavily wooded group of islands, each singing out its special charms – and yet one looked so much like the other – and in my mind’s ears all the time was some united and commingled sound of the long and dull splash of fish barely surfacing and of the brush and crack of twigs and bush giving way before some shadowy animals criss-crossing before my eyes. And superimposed over all this, more pressing and overpowering, was the picture of Columbus and his unknown band of desperate sailors, several hundreds of years before, bearing down in their big billowing boats upon surprised bands of Red Indians who took those strange vessels for huge birds sent by their great lord from heaven. How had the man done it? I kept asking myself. Today, in a monster more like those huge birds of heaven the foredoomed Red Indians wondered at, it takes the better part of the day to make the Atlantic crossing to America, which for better or for worse, all the world now knows is irrevocably there. ‘How had the man done it? I kept asking myself more in sincere rhetoric than actual hope of a practical answer.

However, a friend at Northwestern University up in the State of Illinois soon brought me back to earth. Coming into the great harbour of New York with the famous Statue of Liberty holding out to all the weary and oppressed of the earth her hand flaming gold, he wrote to me, how could anybody but the daft Columbus miss the way to the heart of America? As I had already had the terrible misfortune of missing the way, so to speak, I thought it best not to argue the point, especially that portion of it implying all and everyone coming to the States today must be either hungry, weary or oppressed.

Undoubtedly, my first impressions of America as seen through the city of New York were overlush and typical of the jungles from which I understood I had just emerged. Soon after, they were to dissolve into terms and images more easily recognizable to the civilized. They even resolved into verse. The first of these pieces sees New York as a warehouse cum machine factory –