双语新闻：美国仍未摆脱种族对立的历史阴影

2014-08-25 16:43:30来源：中新网

　　For a founding father who usually took a sunny viewof his nation’s prospects, it was a darklypessimistic prophesy. In his Notes on the State ofVirginia, Thomas Jefferson argued that if – as hehoped – America’s black slaves were one day setfree, the result would be conflict and an inevitabledescent into racial war.

　　尽管托马斯•杰斐逊(Thomas Jefferson)是一位通常对国家前景持乐观看法的国父，但他曾提出一则充满阴郁悲观味道的预言。在《弗吉尼亚笔记》(Notes on the State ofVirginia)一书中，杰斐逊指出，如果就像他所希望的那样，有一天美国黑奴获得了自由，那么将会爆发冲突，并且不可避免地演变为种族战争。

　　And in the hours after Governor Jay Nixon imposed a night-time curfew on the Missouri town ofFerguson following the killing there of an unarmed teenager by a police officer earlier this month,it is indeed reasonable to wonder whether a form of war (sometimes hot, sometimes cold) hasbeen waged against blacks in America from Jefferson’s time until our own.

　　本月早些时候，在密苏里州的弗格森镇，一位并未携带武器的少年被一名警官杀害了。如今，在密苏里州州长杰伊•尼克松(Jay Nixon)宣布在该镇实行宵禁之后，我们有充分的理由问一句：从杰斐逊的时代起直到我们所处的这个时代，美国是否一直在进行着针对黑人的战争——其形式有时候表现为热战，有时候表现为冷战?

　　It is hardly uncommon in the US for a young black man to die under questionablecircumstances at the hands of the police. Many blacks have stories about young men theyknew, or knew of, who were killed this way. When I was at school, a black teenage boy in myhome town died in police custody. The officers spun a wildly implausible tale about what hadhappened to justify the teenager’s killing. Our tiny black community ached at its inability toachieve justice in a town still firmly gripped by the legacy of Jim Crow.

　　在美国，一位年轻黑人在可疑场景下死于警官之手，这样的事并不少见。许多黑人都能说出类似的故事——他们认识或听说过的某个年轻人就是以这样的方式死去的。我上中学时，我的家乡就有一位黑人少年在被警方羁押期间死亡。为了证明少年死有余辜，警官们给事情的来龙去脉编了一套完全站不住脚的说法。在这个当时仍被吉姆•克劳(Jim Crow)的遗产(指吉姆•克劳法，即1876-1965年期间美国部分州实施的种族隔离制度——译者注)所控制的城镇，我们势单力孤的黑人社区只能自己承受无法伸张正义的痛苦。

　　Jefferson saw slavery as a state of war between master and slave. It was a legal institutionthat categorised blacks as property and gave all whites authority over every black person.Even after it was destroyed, the law and the officers who enforced it remained a useful way ofkeeping blacks in an inferior position – in particular, of policing the movement and behaviourof black men.

　　杰斐逊认为奴隶制导致奴隶主和奴隶之间处于一种战争状态。这是一种将黑人视为财产，让所有白人对任何一位黑人都拥有支配权的法律体系。即便这个体系被摧毁了，法律及执行法律的警官依然是保证让黑人处于次等地位的有效手段，尤其是在监督约束黑人行踪及行为方面。

　　This was not war as Jefferson envisaged it, but the post-slavery experiences of black peoplewere consonant with his predictions. Black people, he said, would never forget the wrongs doneto them in slavery and the white majority would never overcome its “deep rooted prejudices”against black people. And this, he feared, would undercut America’s republican experiment –for it would discredit a republic founded on the egalitarian principles eloquently set forth in theAmerican Declaration of Independence.

　　虽然这并不是杰斐逊所推测的那种战争，但是黑人在后奴隶制时代的经历与他的预言是一致的。杰斐逊指出，黑人永远不会忘记奴隶制时代受到的不公正对待，而占人口多数的白人永远无法克服对黑人“根深蒂固的偏见”。他担心，这种状况会阻碍美国的共和实验，因为它有损美国这个建立在平等原则基础上的共和国的声誉，而平等原则白纸黑字地写在美国《独立宣言》(Declaration of Independence)之中。

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