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The World House
地球村
Martin Luther King, Jr.
马丁 •路德•金
Some years ago a famous novelist died. Among his papers was found a list of suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: "A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together." This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great "world house" in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.
几年前，一位著名的小说家去世了。人们在他留下的文件中发现了一个单子，上面列有建议将来写小说可以考虑的情节，其中最突出强调的是这样一句：“一个散居各地的家庭继承了一栋他们不得不一起居住的房子。”这是人类面临的一大新问题。我们已经继承了一栋大房子，一个大型“地球村”，我们不得不一起居住在里面——黑人和白人，东方人和西方人，非犹太人和犹太人，天主教徒和新教徒，穆斯林和印度教徒——一个被观念、文化和利益不必要地分开的家庭。因为我们永远不能再分开，所以必须设法学会和睦相处。
However deeply American Negroes are caught in the struggle to be at last at home in our homeland of the United States, we cannot ignore the larger world house in which we are also dwellers. Equality with whites will not solve the problems of either whites or Negroes if it means equality in a world society stricken by poverty and in a universe doomed to extinction by war.
我们美国黑人一直在进行艰苦的斗争，只为了最终能在自己的家园——美国——安顿下来。但是不管我们卷入这个斗争有多深，我们都不能无视地球村这个更大的家庭，因为我们也是这儿的居民。如果黑人和白人的平等指的是在陷于贫困的世界上和在因战争而注定灭亡宇宙中的平等，那么它既不能解决白人的问题，也不能解决黑人的问题。
