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I am a public policy wonk. I investigate data that points to problems in the American economy
我是一个公共政策狂人。我研究美国经济问题背后的指向性数据，
problems like rising household debt, declining wages and benefits, shortfalls in public revenue.
这些问题包括家庭债务增长，工资福利缩减和公共收入下滑。
And I try to pinpoint solutions to make our economy more prosperous for more people.
我在寻找一些解决办法，让我们的经济更欣欣向荣，造福更多的民众。
I geek out about tax policy and infrastructure investments, and I get really excited by a gracefully designed regulatory regime.
我对税收政策和基础设施投资非常感兴趣，一套设计精巧的管理制度更是能让我无比激动。
These are the kinds of topics that I was talking about on a public television live call-in show in August of 2016.
这些都是2016年8月，我在公共电视台录制现场来电谈话节目时所讨论过的话题。
I was about halfway through the program when a man called in,
节目进行过半时，我接到了一位男士的来电，
identified as Gary from North Carolina and he said ... "I'm a white male, and I'm prejudiced."
他自称盖里，来自北卡罗来纳州，他说：“我是一个白人男性，我对黑人有偏见。”
He then went on to detail his prejudice, talking about black men and gangs and drugs and crime.
接着，他详细地描述了这种偏见，谈论了黑人群体、帮派、毒品和犯罪。
But then he said something that I'll never forget.
然后，他说出了令我终生难忘的那句话。
He said, "But I want to change. And I want to know what I can do to become a better American."
他说：“但是我想改变。我想知道如何成为一个更好的美国人。”
Now remember, my career is about economic policy, as translated into dollars and cents not personal thoughts and feelings.
提醒你们一下，我是研究经济政策的，也就是实实在在的金钱，不是个人思想或感受。
But when I opened my mouth to respond to this man on live television, the most surprising words came out.
但是当我在电视直播节目上回答这位男士的时候，一个最令我意外的词吐口而出。
I said ... "Thank you." I thanked him for admitting his prejudice,
我回答说：“谢谢你。”我感谢他承认自己的偏见，
for wanting to change and for knowing, somehow, that that would make him a better American.
并且希望改变，也认识到这会让他成为更好的美国人。
The exchange between Gary and me went viral.
我和盖里的对话在网络上被疯狂传播。
It's been viewed over eight million times and inspired waves of social media commentary and news coverage.
获得了超过800万的播放量，引发了社交媒体评论和新闻报道的热潮。
And I think people were surprised that a black woman would show such compassion for a prejudiced white man,
我觉得人们肯定惊讶于一位黑人女性竟然会对一位持有偏见的白人男性表现出同情，
and they were surprised that a white man would admit his bias on national television.
而一位白人男性竟然愿意在国家电视台上公然承认自己的偏见。
Not long after Gary and my viral moment, we met in person.
在这段对话发生之后不久，我和盖里见面了。
He said that he had taken my advice. He said that my words had been like someone wiped the dust from a window and let the light in.
他说他听从了我的建议，他说，我的一番话对于他来说，如同擦亮蒙尘的窗户，让阳光照了进来。
Over the years, Gary and I have become friends.
这几年里，我和盖里成为了朋友。
And Gary would tell you that I've taught him a lot about systemic racism in America and public policy.
盖里会告诉你，我让他了解到许多存在于美国社会和公共政策里的系统性种族主义。
But I've learned a lot from Gary, too.
但是盖里也教会我很多。
And the biggest lesson for me has been that Gary's prejudice has caused him to suffer. Fear, anxiety, isolation.
对我而言，最大的收获是，我意识到盖里的偏见也在折磨着他自己，让他感到恐惧、焦虑和孤立。
And it's made me rethink many of the economic problems I've been focusing on my entire career.
这也使我重新思考了在我的整个职业生涯里所研究的许多经济问题。
I wondered, is it possible that our society's racism has likewise been backfiring on the very same people set up to benefit from privilege?
我不禁自问，我们的社会里所存在的种族主义，是否也同时正在伤害着那些本来应从这种特权中获益的人群？
Driven by this question, I've spent the past few years traveling the country, researching and writing a book.
这个疑问驱使着我，在过去几年里辗转全国，一边研究，一边写书。
My conclusion? Racism leads to bad policymaking. It's making our economy worse.
我的结论是什么呢？那就是：种族主义催生了糟糕的政策。
And not just in ways that disadvantage people of color. It turns out it's not a zero sum. Racism is bad for white people, too.
它正在伤害着我们的经济，而且损害的不只是有色人种的利益。事实证明，它并非一场零和博弈。种族主义同样伤害了白人。
Take, for example, America's underinvestment in our public goods,
举个例子，美国对于公共设施的投入不足，
the things that we all need, that we share in common -- our schools and roads and bridges.
例如，那些被大众所需要、所共享的设施--包括我们的学校、公路和桥梁。
Our infrastructure gets a D plus from the American Society of Civil Engineers,
美国土木工程师学会给我们的公共设施的评级为D+，
and we invest less per capita than almost every other advanced nation. But it wasn't always this way.
在发达国家中，我们的人均公共设施投资几乎垫底。然而，情况并非一贯如此。
I traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, and there, I saw how racism can destroy a public good and the public will to support it.
我去了阿拉巴马州的首府蒙哥马利市，在那儿，我见识到种族主义如何摧毁了公共福利以及支持它的公共意志。
In the 1930s and '40s, the United States went on a nationwide building boom of public amenities funded by tax dollars,
在20世纪30至40年代之间，美国掀起了一阵以税收为支撑的修建公共设施的热潮，
which in Montgomery, Alabama, included the Oak Park pool, which was the grandest one for miles.
其中，阿拉巴马州蒙哥马利市的橡树公园里建成了一座方圆几英里内最大的泳池。
You know, back then, people didn't have air conditioners,
要知道，在那个时候，人们的家里没有空调，
and so they spent their hot summer days in a steady rotation of sunning and splashing and then cooling off under a ring of nearby trees.
所以，在炎热的夏日，人们到户外晒太阳、游泳，然后去公园附近的一圈大树下乘凉。
It was the meeting place for the town. Except the Oak Park pool, though it was funded by all of Montgomery citizens, was for whites only.
那是大伙儿交流聚会的好地方。除了橡树公园里的游泳池，即便修建它所使用的税金来自全城的公民，能使用它的只有白人。
When a federal court finally deemed this unconstitutional, the reaction of the town council was swift.
当联邦政府终于宣布这种规定违宪后，市议会随即做出了迅速的反应。
Effective January 1, 1959, they decided they would drain the public pool rather than let black families swim, too.
政府决定从1959年1月1日起排干公共泳池里的水，他们宁愿这样做，也不愿与黑人共享泳池。
This destruction of public goods was replicated across the country in towns not just in the South.
类似的对公共福利的破坏不仅在美国南部发生，也在全国各地上演着。
Towns closed their public parks, pools and schools, all in response to desegregation orders, all throughout the 1960s.
各个城市都关闭了公共公园、游泳池和学校，来应对取消种族隔离的命令，这些举措贯穿了整个60年代。
In Montgomery, they shut down the entire Parks Department for a decade.
在蒙哥马利市，整个公园管理部门关闭了长达10年。
They closed the recreation centers, they even sold off the animals in the zoo.
政府关闭了所有休闲中心，甚至变卖了公园里的动物。
Today, you can walk the grounds of Oak Park, as I did, but very few people do.
今天，橡树公园已经变得人迹罕至，虽然你还是可以像我一样去那儿走一走。
They never rebuilt the pool. Racism has a cost for everyone.
他们再也没有重建那个游泳池。种族主义让所有人都付出了代价。
I remember having that same thought on September 15, 2008, when I learned the breaking news that Lehman Brothers was collapsing.
后来，当我在2008年9月15日得知雷曼兄弟宣告破产时，同样的想法萦绕在我的脑中。
Now Lehman was, like the other financial firms that would go under in the coming days,
雷曼兄弟以及随后几天里陆续倒闭的金融公司之所以破产，
done in by overexposure to a toxic financial instrument based on something that used to be simple and safe -- a 30-year fixed-rate home loan.
是因为过度发放了一种有毒金融产品，而它的出现是基于一种曾经便利安全的产品--30年期固定利率房屋贷款。
But the mortgages at the center and the root of the financial crisis had strange new terms.
而处于金融风暴中心，也是其根源的房屋贷款被赋予了奇怪的、新的还款期限。
And they were developed and aggressively marketed for years in black and brown middle-class communities,
这种贷款面世后，在之后的数年里，开始面向非裔和拉丁裔中产阶级群体进行大肆宣传，
like the one that I visited when I met a homeowner named Glenn.
比如说我曾拜访过的一位叫格伦的房主。
Glenn had owned a home on a leafy street in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Cleveland for over a decade.
格伦的家坐落于克利夫兰市普莱森特山社区的一条郁郁葱葱的街道上，他在那儿住了十几年。
But when I met him, he was near foreclosure.
但我见到他时，他的房屋即将被强制拍卖。
Like nearly all of his neighbors, he'd received a knock on the door from a broker promising to refinance his mortgage.
他的邻居们几乎都陷入了这样的状况，一个经纪人敲门而入，向他们承诺可以进行重新贷款。
But what the broker didn't tell him was that this was a new kind of mortgage.
但是经纪人却对这种新房屋贷款的细节三缄其口。
A mortgage with an inflated interest rate, and a balloon payment and a prepayment penalty if he tried to get out of it.
这种贷款的膨胀式利率最终导致了巨额的尾款，借款人如果想提前终止借贷，还不得不缴纳预付罚金。
Now, the common misperception, then and still today, is that people like Glenn were buying properties they couldn't afford.
大众对此存在一种常见的误解，过去如此，现在还是如此，即，格伦这些人购买了他们无法支付的房产。
That they themselves were risky borrowers.
他们本来就是一群高风险借贷者。
I saw how this stereotype made it harder for policymakers to see the crisis for what it was back when we still had time to stop it.
我明白，这样的刻板印象使政策制定者们更加难以洞悉危机的本质，从而在爆发之前阻止其进一步恶化。
But that's all it was. A stereotype. The majority of subprime mortgages went to people who had good credit, like Glenn.
但问题就在于这种刻板印象。大部分次级贷款购买者的信用等级都不错，比如，格伦。
And African Americans and Latinos were three times as likely -- even if they had good credit, than white people, to get sold these toxic loans.
但是，即便非裔和拉丁裔的信用等级很好，他们被推销高风险信贷的概率仍然是白人的三倍。
The problem wasn't the borrower -- the problem was the loan.
问题不在借贷者——问题在于贷款本身。
After the crash, most of the nation's big lenders, from Wells Fargo to Countrywide, would go on to be fined for racial discrimination.
次贷危机过后，美国的大部分贷款巨头，从富国银行到美国国家金融服务公司，都因涉嫌种族歧视而被罚款。
But that realization came too late.
但这样的觉醒已经为时过晚。
These loans, superprofitable for the lenders but designed to fail for the borrowers,
这些为贷方谋取暴利，但借方注定无法偿还的贷款，
spread out past the confines of black and brown neighborhoods like Glenn's and into the wider, whiter mortgage market.
已经越过像格伦这样的非裔和拉丁裔族群，流入了更广大的、面向其他族裔的房屋贷款市场。
All of the nation's big Wall Street firms bet on these loans.
华尔街的巨头们都在这种贷款上压下重注。
At its peak, one out of every five mortgages in the country was in this mold,
在巅峰时期，每5笔房屋贷款中就有1笔是次级贷款，
and the crisis, the crisis that my colleagues and I saw coming ... would go on to cost us all.
至于危机，我和同事们所预见的近在咫尺的危机...将会让所有人都付出代价。
Nineteen trillion in lost wealth. Pensions, home equity, savings.
全国财富损失将高达19万亿美元，包括退休金、房屋净值和储蓄。
Eight million jobs vanished. A home-ownership rate that has never recovered.
800个就业岗位已经消失不见。住房拥有率再也没有恢复到从前的水平。
My years of advocating in vain for homeowners like Glenn left me convinced:
数年来，为格伦这样的房主徒劳无果的奔走使我最终相信：
we would not have had a financial crisis if it weren't for racism.
若非种族主义，金融危机就不会发生。
In 2017, I traveled to Mississippi, where a group of auto-factory workers was trying to organize into a union.
2017年，我去密西西比州出差，一群汽车工厂的工人们正在组织工会。
Now the benefits they were fighting for -- higher pay, better health care coverage, a real pension
他们所争论的各种福利--更高的工资，更好的医疗保险，实实在在的退休金，
they would have helped everybody at the plant.
有利于工厂里的每一个人。
But in person after person that I talked to -- white, black, for the union, against the union -- race kept coming up.
但是，同我讨论的一个又一个工人--白人、黑人、支持工会的、反对工会的--种族一次又一次地被他们提起。
A white man named Joey put it this way.
一个叫乔伊的白人这样总结。
He said, "White workers think I ain't voting yes if the blacks are voting yes. If the blacks are for it, I'm against it."
他说：“白人群体认为，如果黑人投赞成票，我们就要投反对票。黑人同意的，我统统都反对。”
A white man named Chip told me, "The idea is that if you uplift black people, you're downing white people."
一个叫齐普的白人告诉我：“白人的想法是，帮助黑人相当于损害白人的利益。”
It's like the world's got this crab-in-a-barrel mentality. Now, the union vote failed.
就好像全世界都陷入了一种零和心态。结果，工会投票失败。
Wages at the plant are still lower than their unionized peers', and people there still worry about their health care.
工厂支付的工资仍然低于其他工会的工人，工人们仍然为医保焦心。
You know, it's tempting, perhaps, to focus on the prejudiced attitudes of the men and the workers that I heard in Mississippi.
我知道，或许人们更愿意把目光聚焦在人与人之间的偏见上，比如那群密西西比州的工人对彼此的敌视。
But I'm more interested in holding accountable the people who are selling racist ideas for their profit
但是我更愿意归咎于那些通过贩卖种族主义而获利的人，
than those who are desperate enough to buy it.
而不是那些绝望到不得不信奉这种想法的人。
My travels also took me to places where I saw, however, that it doesn't have to be this way.
然而我走访过的其他一些地方也让我看到，种族之间的关系不必如针尖对麦芒。
I went to Maine, the whitest state in the nation, the oldest, where there are more deaths every year than births,
我去了全国白人比率最高的缅因州。也是人口老化最严重的州，每年的死亡人口比出生人口还多，
and I went to this dying mill town called Lewiston that is being revitalized by new people
我去了刘易斯顿市，一个正在凋零的工业城，因为新来人口而焕发了生机，
mostly African, mostly Muslim, immigrants and refugees.
大部分是黑人和穆斯林，还有一些外国移民和难民。
There, I met a woman named Cecile, whose parents had been part of the last wave of new people to come to Lewiston.
在那儿，我遇见了一位女士，名叫塞西尔，她的父母是最后一波搬到刘易斯顿市的新移民。
These are French-Canadian millworkers at the turn of the century.
他们是世纪之初来到这里的法裔加拿大工人。
Cecile is retired, but she had found a new purpose in life,
虽然塞西尔退休了，但她找到了新的人生目标，
by organizing Congolese refugees to join with the white retirees at the Franco Heritage Center.
她在佛朗哥文化遗产中心组织刚果难民和白人退休人员的联谊活动。
These men and women from the Congo were helping these retirees remember the French that they hadn't spoken since their childhoods.
这些来自刚果的移民在帮助当地退休人员，鼓励他们说从幼年时期就不再说的法语。
And together, these two communities helped each other feel at home.
两个群体其乐融融，亲如一家。
You know, for all the political talk about the newcomers being a drain on the town,
尽管，许多政治言论都强调新移民会榨干一个城市，
a bipartisan think tank found that the local refugee community there created 40 million dollars in tax revenue, and 130 million in income.
一个两党派智库的研究表明，当地的难民群体创造了四千万美元的税收和一亿三千万美元的收入。
And I talked to the town administrator, who was boasting about the fact that Lewiston was building a new school,
当地的行政官非常自豪地告诉我，刘易斯顿市正在建设一所新学校，
when all the rest of towns like theirs in Maine was closing them.
而与此同时，缅因州的其他城市正在关闭学校。
You know, it costs us so much to remain divided.
分裂的代价是如此之大。
This zero-sum thinking, that's what's good for one group has to come at the expense of another, it's what's gotten us into this mess.
这种认为“一群人的收益将是另一群人的损失”的零和思维，就是让我们陷入困境的元凶。
I believe it's time to reject that old paradigm and realize that our fates are linked.
我们应该立即摒弃这种过时的思维模式，承认我们的命运彼此息息相关。
An injury to one is an injury to all. You know, we have a choice.
陷一人于不义，就是陷整体于不义。选择就摆在你我面前。
Our nation was founded on a belief in a hierarchy of human value.
我们的国家建立于一系列人类价值的等级制度之上。
But we are about to be a country with no racial majority.
所谓的多数和少数种族之分即将成为历史。
So we can keep pretending like we're not all on the same team.
我们可以继续一叶障目，彼此离间。
We can keep sabotaging our success and hamstringing our own players.
我们可以继续挑唆内部矛盾，亲手葬送自己的前程。
Or we can let the proximity of so much difference reveal our common humanity.
又或者，我们可以借助多元文化的彼此靠近，展现出共同的人性。
And we can finally invest in our greatest asset. Our people. All of our people. Thank you.
最终，我们得以赋能于这个国家最伟大的财富。我们的人民。全部的人民。谢谢大家。
