美国仍未摆脱种族对立的历史阴影

For a founding father who usually took a sunny view of his nation’s prospects, it was a darkly pessimistic prophesy. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson argued that if – as he hoped – America’s black slaves were one day set free, the result would be conflict and an inevitable descent 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 of Virginia)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 of Ferguson 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) has been 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 questionable circumstances at the hands of the police. Many blacks have stories about young men they knew, or knew of, who were killed this way. When I was at School, a black teenage boy in my home town died in police custody. The officers spun a wildly implausible tale about what had happened to justify the teenager’s killing. Our tiny black community ached at its inability to achieve 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 institution that 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 of keeping blacks in an inferior position – in particular, of policing the movement and behaviour of 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 people were consonant with his predictions. Black people, he said, would never forget the wrongs done to 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 the American 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。

That document, which insists that all men are equal and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, would lose much of its power if the society formed in its image contained a permanent group of second-class citizens. And so Jefferson offered separation as the most viable solution. Blacks would have to leave the US to find true citizenship in a country of their own.

《独立宣言》坚称，人人生来平等，都拥有生存权、自由权和追求幸福的权利。如果按照它的构想建立的社会却存在永恒的二等公民，那么它的影响力将大大降低。于是，杰斐逊提出分离(separation)是最为可行的解决办法。黑人将不得不离开美国，在自己的国度获得真正的公民权。

Perhaps nothing Jefferson ever wrote has caused more outrage and, in some quarters, ridicule among present-day Americans who have come to take a diverse America and black American citizenship for granted. That these thoughts should come from the author of what has been called the American creed seems particularly dispiriting to those who hope we will, one day, “overcome”. Yet in the two centuries since the Notes were published, the doubts Jefferson expressed about the true quality of black American citizenship have hardly been eliminated.

在杰斐逊写下的所有文字中，也许没有哪句话比这一句更引起当今美国人的愤怒——以及部分人的嘲笑——这代人已视多元化的美国和美国黑人的公民权为理所当然。这些想法竟来自“美国信念”的提出者，似乎尤其令那些希望我们——有一天——能“克服”偏见的人感到气馁。然而在《弗吉尼亚笔记》出版后的两百年里，杰斐逊对美国黑人公民权的实质所表达的怀疑从未被根除。

This is not to suggest that criminals should not be punished or to argue that law enforcement is anything other than an essential cornerstone of any society based on law. It is to say that the “deep rooted prejudices” that Jefferson spoke of have warped this vital social function – and made black people, particularly young black men, presumptive felons outside the boundaries of full citizenship.

本文并不是说罪犯不该受到惩罚，或执法不是所有法治社会的重要基石。而是说，杰斐逊所讲的“根深蒂固的偏见”已扭曲了这一重要的社会功能，也让黑人、尤其是年轻黑人被假定为罪犯，将他们隔离在充分享有公民权的边界之外。

If you examine the record of police conduct – from instances of brutal treatment of blacks in custody, to stop-and-frisk policies that disrupt the lives of innocent people in black communities, to racial disparities in drug arrests and sentencing – that is surely the conclusion you must draw.

如果你去查警察部门的行为记录——从黑人在羁押期间受虐待，到扰乱黑人群体中无辜民众生活的拦阻搜身(stop-and-frisk)政策，以及在逮捕涉毒人员及判刑方面存在的种族歧视现象——你肯定会得出上述结论。

Yet merely to state it is to invite efforts to change the subject. “What about black-on-black crime?” “What about the problems with black families?” As if the existence of these problems justifies diminishing the rights of an entire community.

然而，如果只是单纯地摆事实，有些人就会竭力转换话题。“黑人对黑人的犯罪呢？”“黑人的家庭问题呢？”好像这些问题的存在就能证明削弱一整个群体的权利是合理的。

It is as if there is no language to talk about blacks as citizens of a republic in relation to their government. Witness the response to the peaceful protests in the aftermath of Brown’s death – the appalling spectacle of a militarised police force with the look of an invading army, training their weapons on unarmed citizens. Compare this to what happened on the Bundy ranch in Utah earlier this year, when white ranchers, many of them armed, protested against what they call the overreaching behaviour of the federal government. The stand-off between federal officials and the ranchers was tranquil by comparison. There was no confrontation.

至于身为共和国公民的黑人与其政府之间的关系，好像就无话可谈了。在弗格森镇，黑人少年布朗之死引发了和平抗议，而政府的反应是派出一支形似侵略军的军事化警察部队，他们把武器对准了手无寸铁的平民们。我们将这骇人的景象与今年早些时候发生在犹他州邦迪农场的事件比较一下，当时白人农场主们——其中不少人拿着武器——抗议他们所说的联邦政府的过界行为。相比之下，联邦官员和农场主们的对峙相当平静，双方之间没爆发冲突。

Our tortured racial past continues to haunt us. Blacks are not yet full citizens. Jefferson is sometimes vilified for anticipating the legacy of slavery, and of the doctrine of white supremacy that permitted it. But he was more prescient than many would care to admit.

美国不堪的种族历史继续困扰着我们。黑人还不是完全意义上的公民。杰斐逊对奴隶制及白人至上主义的遗留问题的预测，有时会使他遭到诋毁，但他的先见之明超出许多人所愿意承认的。

The writer is a professor at Harvard Law School and winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History

本文作者为哈佛法学院(Harvard Law School)教授，2009年获普利策(Pulitzer Prize)历史奖