U.S. complicity in Congo atrocities

SUSAN SPANO’S piece “Belgium Confronts Its Colonial Past” [Her World, March 13] is an evenhanded but shortsighted review of “Memory of Congo: The Colonial Era.” This exhibition at the Royal Museum for Central Africa is a response to “criticism of Belgium’s strong-arm extraction of profit from its Central African colony.”

Spano captures the ambiguities about how much responsibility Belgians are willing to take for the atrocities of the colonial period and those that continue, but she avoids mention of U.S. complicity in these struggles. As “Belgium Confronts Its Colonial Past,” the United States needs to do the same.

Allen F. Roberts

Los Angeles

Roberts is the director of the African Studies Center at UCLA.