Video: One Man's View of a Continent the Africans

The room in an expensive West African hotel has most of the amenities of Western accommodations. But the radio and television sets do not work, nor does the telephone. As for the hot-water faucet, it has never even been connected. A perfect symbol, our guide tells us, for the central contradiction of a continent: Westernization is only a facade that hides the "realities of Africa."

Those realities -- at least, one person's view of them -- are the subject of The Africans, a series that has ignited PBS's latest brush fire of controversy. The nine-week survey of African culture, history and...