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我们需要解决种族暴力的真正根源

来源:可可英语 编辑:max   可可英语APP下载 |  可可官方微信:ikekenet

I had just finished teaching Introduction to American Politics to a group of eager undergraduates.

我刚结束给一群嗷嗷待哺的研究生上的《美国政治概论》课。
This was my first year teaching, but I had pulled off a slamming lecture, and I was feeling good about myself.
那是我教书的第一年,但是我成功取得了很震撼的上课效果,自己感觉还不错。
As I left the classroom, I looked down at my phone and saw that I had five missed calls from my brother Kenny.
那天走出教室的时候,我低头看了眼手机,上面显示有五个来自我弟弟肯尼的未接电话。
At the time, Kenny was a student at Temple University and living in North Philly.
那时他还是天普大学的一个学生,住在费城北部。
For those who don't know North Philly, it's an area that is predominantly black and low-income, with a very visible police presence.
也许有人不了解费城北部,那边住的主要是黑人和低收入群体,经常能看见警察。
When I returned his phone call, Kenny is loud and swearing into the phone.
我回拨了肯尼的电话,他在电话那头大声地喊叫着。
I can tell that something very bad happened, but I'm not sure what.
我知道一定发生了什么很不好的事,但不清楚那具体是什么。
When I'm finally able to get him to calm down,
当我终于让他冷静下来,
he tells me how he was sitting on the stoop of his building talking to a friend
他告诉我,刚才他和一个朋友坐在楼前的台阶上聊天,
when four police officers ran up on him and threw him and three others on the ground,
突然有四个警察冲向他,把他和另外三个人掀翻在地,
handcuffed them and then pushed them up against a wall, all the while asking them, "What drugs do you have? What drugs do you have?"
给他们带上手铐,然后把他们按在墙上,还一直在问:“你带的是什么毒品?你带的是什么毒品?”
Kenny had no drugs. He told the officers this many times,
但肯尼并没有携带毒品。他跟警察说了很多次,
but each statement of no drugs only seemed to provoke more force and make the officers more upset.
但他每一次没有带毒品的陈述似乎都只招致更多暴力,也让警察更加暴躁。
As Kenny sat, cuffed, and slumped against a brick wall,
肯尼戴着手铐,背靠着一堵砖墙跌坐着,
he quietly told the officers that he was a student at Temple University and without reason, they could not hold him.
他平静地告诉警察,他是天普大学的学生,没有理由的情况下他们不能抓人。
The officers finally retrieved his college ID, which was in his wallet that had slipped out when he was slammed to the pavement,
那些警察后来终于找到了他的学生证,证件原本在他的钱包里,他被推上人行道的时候钱包滑了出来,
realized that he was indeed in college, without drugs, and then let him go.
警察意识到他的确是在上学,也没有携带毒品,就让他走了。
After Kenny told me this story, he was still loud and upset.
肯尼讲完这个事情之后,他的声音还是很大,他很心烦。
I was shaking, barely able to hold the phone to my ear,
我整个人都在颤抖,几乎无法维持把手机举在耳边的姿势,
all of the joy from my great day of teaching gone, and replaced with a deep sense of helplessness and alarm.
从我完美的教学中获得的快乐消失殆尽,取而代之的是一种深深的无助和惊恐。
I wanted to remove the hurt and frustration that Kenny felt, that I could hear so clearly through the phone,
我想帮肯尼赶走他感受到的伤痛和沮丧的情绪,我在电话里听地如此清晰,
but I neither had the will nor the ability to lie to him about the mightiness of American racism.
但我既没有那个意志,也没有能力去撒谎,告诉他美国的种族主义没有那么可怕。
And we both silently knew that this would not be the last time that he would be stopped and frisked by the police for drugs.
一片沉默中,我们都知道,这不会是他最后一次被警察拦下搜身上的毒品。
In an attempt to try to calm him down and to shift attention onto something that he perhaps did have control over,
我试图让他冷静下来,把注意力转移到某件他也许可以控制的事情上去,
I had this genius idea and suggested that he focused his attention on school work to kind of take his mind off of things.
于是我想到了一个绝妙的办法,我建议他把注意力转移到学校布置的作业上去,好暂时不想这些事。
He yells into the phone at me, "What is that going to do? Why should I focus on my school work when the police are allowed to do things like this?"
可他在电话里对我大吼:“那有什么用?警察都可以这样对我,我为什么应该专注学业?”
And then he says to me, "I'm not a student in your class, Megan. Your books are not going to save me."
然后他跟我说:“梅根,我不是你班上的学生。你的课本救不了我。”
I silently nodded on the other end of the phone.
我沉默地在电话另一端点头。
In a lifetime of often heated exchanges with him, I've probably never been more wrong, and he has never been more right.
在他充满激烈冲突的一生中,我也许从未错得如此离谱,而他从未对的如此让人哑口无言。
Kenny is not alone. This violent interaction between black men and women, and police officers plays out in cities and towns across the United States,
肯尼不是一个人。这种黑人男性和女性与警察之间的暴力冲突,在美国的各个城镇持续上演,
often with much more devastating results.
并且经常伴随着可怕的结果。
According to the most recent statistics, blacks are three times more likely to be shot and killed by police than whites.
最新的统计数据显示,黑人被警察开枪杀死的可能性是白人的三倍。
The question on everyone's mind and the question that I get asked the most is, "How do we solve this problem?"
每个人心中所想的、同时也是我最频繁被问到的问题是:“我们要怎么才能解决这个问题?”
And I confess I cringe at this question, not because it's not a good question, but because I think we're asking the wrong question.
我承认我在这个问题上感到畏缩,不是因为这个问题不好,而是因为我认为我们问错了问题。
I'm not convinced we even understand how we got to this point in the fist place.
我认为我们首先甚至没有理解我们是怎么走到这一步的。
Better understanding of the root causes of the current place where we are will help provide us with the tools that we need to move us forward.
而更好地理解我们走到今天这个地步的根本原因,可以帮助我们找到前进的办法。
However, I confess that even I sometimes am more eager to solve a problem than I am to understand it.
然而,我坦承,即使我自己,也偶尔会对解决问题而不是理解问题更急迫。
So a few years ago, I adopted a corgi from a shelter and named him President Bartlet, off of The West Wing.
几年前,我从救助站收养了一只柯基犬,给它取名为巴特勒总统,这个名字来自《白宫风云》。
Now, he's super adorable! But he was abused, and he's very aggressive whenever he sees another dog.
它非常可爱!但它受过虐待,在看见别的狗时,它会表现得非常有攻击性。
My fix in my first year was to walk him at crazy hours of the day, but this worked only marginally well, and I was stressed and tired.
第一年我治疗它的办法就是每天带着它疯狂走路,但这样做只起了很小的作用,而且弄得我压力很大,也很疲惫。
The following year, I decided to hire a trainer to try to figure the underlying issues behind his reactive behavior.
在接下来的一年,我请了一个训练师,想弄清楚它应激反应下隐藏的问题。
On the first day of our meeting, the trainer looks at me and says, "Fixes that do not address the root causes of an issue are not really fixes at all."
我们见面的第一天,训练师看着我说:“治标不治本是没有用的。”
I realized that in my haste to fix President Bartlet, I actually had made him worse.
我突然意识到,在我急着想要治好巴特勒总统的同时,我实际上让它的病情加重了。
The present crisis surrounding race in the United States, I think, suffers from a lack of attention to the root causes.
我认为,目前围绕着美国种族问题的危机,来自对其根源问题的不够重视。
Better attention to the root causes, I am convinced,
我相信更多地关注根源问题,
will help us to figure out how to move past where we right now in terms of the current racial climate in the United States.
可以帮助我们弄清楚应该如何在美国当前的种族问题背景下向前一步。
So why does the killing of unarmed blacks to continue to happen?
那么为什么未携带武器的黑人被杀事件还在上演?
I think it continues to happen because we have the wrong diagnosis and the wrong cure.
我认为这是因为我们诊断失误,开错了处方。
And what I mean by this is we tend to think the problem of racial violence
我这样说的意思是,我们往往认为种族暴力的罪行
is isolated to a few stubborn racists that haven't yet drunk kind of this progressive Kool-Aid.
是少数顽固的、没有喝过酷爱牌饮料的种族主义者犯下的。
And we tend to think the cure to racial injustices in the United States should always revolve around education.
我们往往认为,解决美国种族歧视的办法就是围绕教育下功夫。
In the rest of my talk today, I'm going to challenge both of these ideas
在今天演讲的接下来的部分,我会同时对这些观念进行挑战,
and suggest a new way to understand the problem, as well as the solution.
并提出理解这个问题的新思路和其解决办法。
First, part of the reason the killing of unarmed blacks continues to happen at an alarming rate
首先,未携带武器的黑人被杀事件持续以惊人的频率上演的部分原因,
is because we haven't properly addressed our long history of racial terror in this country,
是我们并没有合理地解决这个国家漫长历史中遗留的种族恐惧问题,
which has treated blackness as a proxy for criminality, as a substitute for criminality.
当时黑色肤色就是犯罪的代名词、犯罪的替代品。
Instead, when confronted with kind of these jarring racial injustices, what we like to do is to point to the bad racist apples.
取而代之的是,当面对这些不和谐的种族歧视的问题时,我们喜欢指责那些搞种族歧视的人们。
We like to individualize the problem and situate it away from us.
我们喜欢把这个问题个人化,让它远离我们自身。
This is why we're able to make sense of, let's say, a Dylann Roof, the shooter in Charlston, South Carolina,
这样我们就可以理解为何来自南卡罗莱纳州的枪手迪伦·鲁夫,
who shot up the black church and had a white-power manifesto.
在扫射了黑人教堂之后,发表了一篇白人权力宣言。
But the problem with contemporary racial violence is not that we have a few kind of racist bad apples.
而当代种族暴力的问题并不在于我们国家有少量种族歧视的坏人。
The problem is that the whole tree, the whole apple tree, is infected.
问题在于整棵树,整颗苹果树都受了感染。
The problem is that the presumption of dangerousness is tightly bound to race for so many in this country.
问题在于我们国家有太多人喜欢把危险和种族紧密相连。
For police officers to justify the use of deadly force, they have to reasonably believe that their lives are in danger.
警察要表明自己使用致命武力是合理的,就必须证明自己认为自己的生命处于危险之中的想法是合理的。
In all the high-profile killings of blacks over the past year, officers attest to feeling under threat.
在过去几年中,在所有影响较大的黑人被杀的案件中,警察都表示他们感觉自己当时正面临威胁。
But what does this mean in the context of unarmed citizens?
但这在未携带武器的公民看来意味着什么?
It means that black skin triggers a heightened sense of threat, a life-threatening sense of threat,
这意味着黑色的皮肤会引发更严重的威胁感,会危及生命的威胁感,
that then influences the officers' decision to use deadly force.
然后这种感觉会影响警察做出使用致命武力的决定。
According to the most recent statistics, 33% of blacks that have been killed by police were unarmed.
最新数据显示,警察杀死的黑人中有33%是未携带武器的。
But it's not just police that pop up this myth of black danger.
而这种对黑色威胁的想象并不是警察造成的。
This myth gets reinforced and takes on a truth-like quality through everyday interaction,
这种想象如同既定真相一般,通过每天的接触得到加强,
when a black man passes and a woman clutches her purse
当一名黑人男性擦身而过,女人攥紧了自己的钱包,
or when a group of black friends walk by a car and hear the jarring sound of someone who has just pushed their automatic locks because they are afraid.
或者当一群黑人朋友走过一辆车,他们听见车主因为害怕锁上了自动锁的刺耳的声音。
And I have friends on both sides of this:
我两种朋友都有:
black men with great jobs, who just want to be viewed as a person and not as a threat after a long day of work;
有一个黑人男性朋友,他有一份体面的工作,在结束一天漫长的工作后,他希望自己被当作一个人而不是一个威胁来看待;
and I have really great white and Asian woman friends,
我还有一个人很好的亚裔白人女性朋友,
who clutch their purse and walk quickly if they see a black man on a dimly-lit street,
在灯光昏暗的街道上如果遇见一位黑人男性,她会捏紧钱包加快脚步,
and then feel ashamed in the need to over-explain their actions to me.
然后又会因为要向我过度解释自己的行为而感到羞愧。
And I've also been on the receiving end of having who I was reduced to someone else's false perception of how much of a danger I posed.
我也遭受过同样的对待,在别人错误的感知中,我从我自己降级成了某种程度的威胁。
Last year, I was coming back from a trip, and I was singled out by the TSA agent.
去年,我刚结束一段旅程,在返回途中,我被美国运输安全局的特勤挑出来。
I thought that I had left a water bottle, like I often do, in my bag.
我以为像往常一样是因为我忘了一瓶水在包里。
But he ushered me to a separate area, and then two more TSA agents surrounded me,
但他把我带到一个单独的空间里,又来了两个运输安全局的人围住了我,
and I knew in my gut that something bad was about to go down.
我意识到一些很不好的事情就要发生了。
The lead TSA agent proceeds to ask -- no, accuse -- me of bringing a weapon into the airport.
领头的特勤开始询问,不,是指控,我携带了武器进入机场。
When I insisted that I did not bring a weapon into the airport,
我坚称自己没有携带武器进入机场,
he produces a piece of costume jewelry, a double ring that I had picked up for $4 on vacation.
而他拿出了一件定制首饰给我看,那是度假时我挑的一个价值4美元的双指戒指。
It was like his "gotcha" moment, and it was my superconfused moment.
他的表情就像在说,“抓到你了吧”,而我则非常困惑。
He then accuses me of bringing brass knuckles, a deadly weapon, into a United States airport.
然后他继续指控我携带了致命武器指节铜环进入美国。
I was almost at a loss of words, which is rare for someone like me,
我近乎无语,而这种情况对我这样的人来说是很少见的,
but I politely pointed out to him that the ring was plastic, it wasn't brass,
但我仍礼貌地告诉他这个戒指是塑料做的,不是铜制的,
and these weren't knuckles, it was just a ring that went over two fingers instead of one finger.
它也不是指节环,而是可以同时戴在两根手指上的戒指,这点与别的只能戴一根手指的戒指不同。

我们需要解决种族暴力的真正根源

But have you ever talked to someone and felt like you didn't exist, like when they spoke to you, they spoke right through you?

但你们有没有跟这种人对话过,就好象你压根不存在一样,你说话的同时他也在说话?
Well, that's how I felt. He got more angry at my explanations, looked me in my face, and said,
我当时就是这种感觉。我越解释,他越愤怒,他看着我的脸说:
"You people always lie. I know that this is a weapon, and I'm not going to let someone dangerous like you board a plane today."
“你们这种人总是撒谎。我知道这就是武器,我今天不会让一个像你这样危险的人登上飞机的。”
Well, I started to shake, right?
我开始颤抖。
Because we've all seen this movie about the brown girl who walks into the airport with a deadly weapon,
因为我们都看过这种电影,一个深色皮肤的女孩携带着致命武器进入机场,
and it never really ends well for her. It doesn't. It never does.
她从来不会有好下场。不会的。从来不会。
So, I had to do what I hate doing, and I used my credentials to get me out of a bad situation.
于是我不得不做了一件我很讨厌的事,我拿出了证件好让自己脱离这个糟糕的情境。
I told him that I was a professor of Constitutional Law and American Politics. Right?
我告诉他,我是美国宪法与政治学的一名教授。
Yeah, so... I cited US criminal code, landmark Supreme Court decisions,
没错,于是我引用了美国刑法,美国最高法院具有里程碑意义的那些判决,
and rules from the Homeland Security Rulebook, because I also teach Civil Liberties. And then he started to get very nervous.
还有国土安全规则手册中的规则,因为我也教公民自由。然后他开始变得紧张。
He asked what school I worked at. I told him, he Googled my name, and the blood drained from his face. Right?
他问我在哪个学校工作。我告诉了他,他上谷歌搜索了我的名字,然后他脸红地像要滴血。
As he realized I wasn't making this up, I knew my rights and I was a college professor.
他意识到我说的这些不是胡编乱造,我清楚自己的权利,我是一名大学教授。
And then, when he looked back at me, he finally saw me, not as a dangerous threat, but as a person.
接下来,他再看我的时候,他终于不是把我视为一个威胁,而是视为一个人。
After a few more minutes, he let me go, to catch my much delayed flight,
又过了几分钟,他让我走了,去赶我那趟延迟了好一会儿的航班,
I found a seat in the airport terminal, still trembling with rage at the way that I had been treated.
我在机场航站楼找到了座位,却仍然因为被这样对待而愤怒地浑身发抖。
I was only seated for a few minutes when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
我只坐了几分钟,就感觉肩膀被人轻拍了一下。
A woman airport worker said that she saw my whole ordeal, and that he does this all the time to black passengers,
一名女性机场工作人员说她看见了我受的全部折磨,说那个特勤一直对黑人乘客这样,
and I was lucky to have been released from his custody so quickly.
能被他这么快就放出来,我很幸运。
But it shouldn't take a university website profile to be viewed as non-threatening, right?
但人不应该要有大学网站信息才能被判定为没有威胁,不是吗?
Part of the reason I shared this story and some of the other ones is that I think, in talking about the current racial crisis,
我分享这个故事和其他一些故事的部分原因在于,当谈及当下的种族危机时,
we tend to focus all of our attention on police
我们往往把所有注意力放在警察身上,
and overlook our own complicity in creating an environment in which black lives are not treated as equal.
而忽视了正是作为同谋的我们,创造了一种让黑人的生命无法被平等对待的环境。
To be clear in thinking about solutions to the racial violence,
说到解决种族问题的办法,我先说清楚,
I'm in favor of body cameras, I'm in favor of a non-militarized police force,
我支持使用执法记录仪,我支持非军事化警察部队,
I'm in favor of stricter laws that make officers more accountable when they stop and frisk people on the street.
我支持制定更严格的法律,让警察在街上拦下行人并搜身的时候负有更多责任。
But I'm not convinced that we would need something like body cameras
但我不相信我们会需要用到执法记录仪这样的东西,
if we didn't live in a society that treat blacks as dangerous and suspicious first, and as citizens second.
如果我们不是生活在一个把黑人先看做危险分子和嫌疑犯、后看作公民的社会中。
It's not just a few bad racist apples in a police department or at an airport;
问题不在于警察系统或某个机场的几个种族主义者,
it's all of us, who in big ways through our actions and in small ways by our silences, support this lie
而在于我们,往大了说是我们的行为,往小了说是我们的沉默,在支撑着这个谎言,
because that's what it is, it's a lie -- that somehow black folk are more dangerous than the rest of us.
因为就是这样,它就是谎言,这个谎言说,在某种程度上,黑人比我们其他人更危险。
So not only do I believe that we've misdiagnosed the problem, I also think we have the wrong cure to it.
所以我不仅认为我们对问题下了错误诊断,我还认为我们用了错的治疗方法。
We keep offering up education as a solution to all racial injustices in the United States.
我们一直把教育当作解决美国所有种族问题的办法。
It's kind of what I call sometimes in my classes as the "Robitussin of civil rights."
它就像我有时会在课上说的“公民权利的惠菲芬”一样。
Like, when I was little, my mom loved Robitussin. She would give me it.
在我小的时候,我妈妈特别爱惠菲芬。她老给我吃这个。
I got a cold, Robitussin; flu, Robitussin; like, allergies? Robitussin. Like, where's the Penadryl?
我感冒了,吃惠菲芬;得流感了,用惠菲芬;过敏了,用惠菲芬。那苯海拉明去哪了?
But just like Robitussin is not a cure-all for all types of sicknesses, education is not a cure-all for all of America's racial sins.
正如惠菲芬不是能治愈所有疾病的万能药,教育也不是能治好美国所有种族犯罪的万能药。
And yet, education is still how most Americans understand the responsibility to fixing contemporary racial injustices.
但现在,在大部分美国人的理解中,教育仍担负着解决当前种族主义问题的责任。
Our measure of how far we have come in the area of race relations is most often calculated in how integrated our schools are,
我们在种族关系上走了多远,针对这个问题,我们的衡量标准大部分时候都是我们的学校有多么包容,
how many inovative education experiments are currently going on, and how many federal dollars are committed towards education.
我们正在进行的创新型教育实验有多少,以及联邦又在教育事业中投入了多少美金。
But the contemporary problem surrounding the killing of unarmed blacks
但是现在手无寸铁的黑人被杀害的问题的症结,
is not a problem that boils down to providing greater educational opportunities to blacks. This is a misdiagnosis.
并不在于要给黑人提供多好的教育机会。这是误诊。
A book is not going to stop the bullet barreling through a gun at Rekia Boyd in Chicago,
一本书拦不住枪管里高速射向芝加哥的瑞奇亚·博得的那颗子弹,
and longer classroom times are not going to save Freddie Gray from being illegally stopped and manhandled by police in Baltimore.
更长的课堂时间也无法在巴尔的摩将弗雷迪·格雷从被警察非法拦下和粗暴推搡中拯救出来。
This is what I know for sure: that in order to combat continuing racial injustices today,
我只知道下面这件事一定是对的:为了对抗现在一直在发生的种族歧视现象,
we must expand our vision and our responsibility to what civil rights actually means.
我们必须拓宽眼界和责任,去理解民权真正意味着什么。
We must include the battle against racist violence in our understanding of civil rights.
我们必须把反对种族暴力囊括进对民权的理解中。
Instead of education, what if we placed freedom from racist violence at the crux of what it means to be free and equal in the United States?
如果我们在美国自由和平等的核心放置的不是教育,而是杜绝种族暴力,会怎么样?
Doing so does not mean that we necessarily dislodge education,
这样做并不意味着我们要放弃教育,
but it means that if racism and white supremacy are a rock fortress, we assemble greater arsenal weapons to break the damn thing down.
它意味着如果种族主义和白人至上主义是石头做的堡垒,我们就要集中更强的火力来把这破玩意儿端掉。
I know this is not an easy task, but I know that it can be done.
我知道这绝非易事,但我也知道我们可以做到。
So in my real life, I'm a political scientist and a historian, and I've spent the last 10 years focused on a surprising finding:
在现实生活中,我是一个政治学者和历史学家,我花了过去10年时间得到一个令人惊讶的发现:
that before the civil rights group the NAACP focused on its historic campaign against segregated education,
在民权团体出现之前,美国全国有色人种协进会一直专注于对隔离教育的斗争。
the NAACP spent the first two decades of the 20th century focused on fighting escalating levels of racial violence that blacks endured
在20世纪的前20年,他们专注于抗争黑人遭受的持续升级的种族暴力,
as a result of the actions from police, politicians, and private white citizens in the south and in the north.
这些暴力来自于南方和北方的警察、政客和白人个体。
In order to wage this big campaign against racial violence, the NAACP organized mass demonstrations in the streets.
为了开展这项针对种族暴力的大型运动,美国全国有色人种协进会在街上组织了大规模的游行。
They lobbied Congress to pass an anti-lynching bill.
他们游说国会通过了反对私刑的法案。
They litigated and won a landmark decision in front of the Supreme Court.
他们在最高法院起诉,并赢得了关键性案件的胜利。
And they petitioned three different presidents to make a statement against lynching.
他们向三位不同的总统请愿,请他们发表反对私刑的声明。
It was this massive, extraordinary, in-your-face campaign that forced America to confront lynching and mob violence against African Americans.
正是这场盛大的、非凡的、咄咄逼人的运动,逼迫美国正视非裔美国人遭受的私刑和群体暴力。
It asked America how strong was its commitment to protecting black lives.
它在质问美国,它要保护黑人生命的承诺到底有多坚定。
As a result of this work in early 20th century, the rates of lynching and mob violence dramatically decreased.
正是由于20世纪早期的这场运动,私刑和群体暴力的发生率急剧下降。
I tell this story about the NAACP's historic kind of campaign against racial violence
我讲述全国有色人种协进会这场有重大历史意义的、针对种族暴力的运动,
because I believe our past history can light a way out of the present darkness.
是因为我相信我们过去的历史可以照亮我们漆黑的前路。
If we listen to what this history tells us, then we must struggle through this current moment.
如果我们倾听历史的讲述,我们就必须在当下艰难抗争。
We must confront the ways that our actions and our institutions lead to a differential treatment of blacks, even if done unintentionally.
我们必须见证着我们的行为和我们的制度导向一条用不同方式对待黑人的路,即使这是无意间促成的。
Today, people across the United States are taking to streets and are demanding to be seen,
今天,全美人民走上街头,要求被关注到,
not as dangerous but as people whose lives have value and deserve protection.
不是作为危险人物,而是作为其生命有价值且值得被保护的人。
Some of these groups are associated directly, and some indirectly, with the Black Lives Matter movement.
这些组织有的和“黑人的命也是命”运动有直接联系,有的没有直接联系。
Without the efforts of these groups, so many of these killings of unarmed blacks would have been swapped under the rug,
没有这些组织的努力,这么多手无寸铁的黑人被杀害的真相就会被掩盖,
and we would have lost attention long ago.
而我们也会在很早之前就不再关注。
But so many of these activists have denied the comforts of silence, and they are being active around this issue.
但这些活动人士拒绝沉默的安慰,他们在这一问题上一直很活跃。
Their message and my message to you today is that we must pay closer attention to the way that black people are treated.
他们要说的话和我今天要对你们说的话就是,我们必须更密切的关注黑人受到了怎样的对待。
The story of police brutality and killings of unarmed blacks is not a story about black people.
警察暴力和杀害无武装黑人的事件并不是只跟黑人有关。
It's a story about all of us, about racial progress and the stubborn durability of American racism.
它跟我们所有人都相关,关乎种族进步和美国种族主义的顽疾。
It's about if we will stop making the mistakes of our past
它关乎我们是否会停止过去犯下的错误,
and confront our own complicity in this great American lie that somehow black people are more dangerous than others.
正视我们“在黑人比其他人种更危险”这一巨大的美国谎言中推波助澜的事实。
And finally, it's about if we have the courage to take a collective stand against racial injustice today.
最后,它还关乎我们今天是否有勇气站在一起反对种族歧视。
This year, nearly half of my students in my race and politics upper division course
今年,有一半和我同一种族的上了我政治高级课的学生,
participated in a walkout in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
参与了游行,支持“黑人的命也是命”运动。
Halfway through my lecture, I could hear the swelling crowd of students, teachers and community members in the Quad at the University of Washington.
讲课中途,我可以听见华盛顿大学的学生、老师和社会团体人士组成的拥挤人群发出的声音。
I smiled to myself as I had a flashback to the conversation that I had with Kenny, now five years ago. He was right, of course.
我想起我曾跟肯尼有过的对话,我笑了一下,那是五年前的事了。当然,他是对的。
My books and my silence will not save these students,
我的课本和我的沉默拯救不了这些学生,
but their activism, their courage in challenging the status quo, and this movement just might. Thanks.
但是他们的行动、他们挑战现状的勇气和这场运动,可以。谢谢大家。

重点单词   查看全部解释    
dislodge [dis'lɔdʒ]

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vt. 逐出,用力移出 vi. 移走,离开

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attest [ə'test]

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v. 证明,作证,为 ... 作证

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expand [iks'pænd]

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v. 增加,详述,扩展,使 ... 膨胀,
v

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movement ['mu:vmənt]

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n. 活动,运动,移动,[音]乐章

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conversation [.kɔnvə'seiʃən]

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n. 会话,谈话

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terror ['terə]

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n. 恐怖,惊骇,令人惧怕或讨厌的人或事物

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issue ['iʃju:]

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n. 发行物,期刊号,争论点
vi. & vt

 
figure ['figə]

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n. 图形,数字,形状; 人物,外形,体型
v

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progressive [prə'gresiv]

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adj. 前进的,渐进的
n. 进步人士

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violence ['vaiələns]

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n. 暴力,猛烈,强暴,暴行

 

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