美國仍未擺脫種族對立的歷史陰影

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.

儘管托馬斯•傑斐遜(Thomas Jefferson)是一位通常對國家前景持樂觀看法的國父，但他曾提出一則充滿陰鬱悲觀味道的預言。在《弗吉尼亞筆記》(Notes on the State of Virginia)一書中，傑斐遜指出，如果就像他所希望的那樣，有一天美國黑奴獲得了自由，那麼將會爆發衝突，並且不可避免地演變爲種族戰爭。

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.

本月早些時候，在密蘇里州的弗格森鎮，一位並未攜帶武器的少年被一名警官殺害了。如今，在密蘇里州州長傑伊•尼克松(Jay Nixon)宣佈在該鎮實行宵禁之後，我們有充分的理由問一句：從傑斐遜的時代起直到我們所處的這個時代，美國是否一直在進行着針對黑人的戰爭——其形式有時候表現爲熱戰，有時候表現爲冷戰？

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.

在美國，一位年輕黑人在可疑場景下死於警官之手，這樣的事並不少見。許多黑人都能說出類似的故事——他們認識或聽說過的某個年輕人就是以這樣的方式死去的。我上中學時，我的家鄉就有一位黑人少年在被警方羈押期間死亡。爲了證明少年死有餘辜，警官們給事情的來龍去脈編了一套完全站不住腳的說法。在這個當時仍被吉姆•克勞(Jim Crow)的遺產（指吉姆•克勞法，即1876-1965年期間美國部分州實施的種族隔離制度——譯者注）所控制的城鎮，我們勢單力孤的黑人社區只能自己承受無法伸張正義的痛苦。

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.

傑斐遜認爲奴隸制導致奴隸主和奴隸之間處於一種戰爭狀態。這是一種將黑人視爲財產，讓所有白人對任何一位黑人都擁有支配權的法律體系。即便這個體系被摧毀了，法律及執行法律的警官依然是保證讓黑人處於次等地位的有效手段，尤其是在監督約束黑人行蹤及行爲方面。

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.

雖然這並不是傑斐遜所推測的那種戰爭，但是黑人在後奴隸制時代的經歷與他的預言是一致的。傑斐遜指出，黑人永遠不會忘記奴隸制時代受到的不公正對待，而占人口多數的白人永遠無法克服對黑人“根深蒂固的偏見”。他擔心，這種狀況會阻礙美國的共和實驗，因爲它有損美國這個建立在平等原則基礎上的共和國的聲譽，而平等原則白紙黑字地寫在美國《獨立宣言》(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.

《獨立宣言》堅稱，人人生來平等，都擁有生存權、自由權和追求幸福的權利。如果按照它的構想建立的社會卻存在永恆的二等公民，那麼它的影響力將大大降低。於是，傑斐遜提出分離(separation)是最爲可行的解決辦法。黑人將不得不離開美國，在自己的國度獲得真正的公民權。

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.

在傑斐遜寫下的所有文字中，也許沒有哪句話比這一句更引起當今美國人的憤怒——以及部分人的嘲笑——這代人已視多元化的美國和美國黑人的公民權爲理所當然。這些想法竟來自“美國信念”的提出者，似乎尤其令那些希望我們——有一天——能“克服”偏見的人感到氣餒。然而在《弗吉尼亞筆記》出版後的兩百年裏，傑斐遜對美國黑人公民權的實質所表達的懷疑從未被根除。

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.

本文並不是說罪犯不該受到懲罰，或執法不是所有法治社會的重要基石。而是說，傑斐遜所講的“根深蒂固的偏見”已扭曲了這一重要的社會功能，也讓黑人、尤其是年輕黑人被假定爲罪犯，將他們隔離在充分享有公民權的邊界之外。

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.

如果你去查警察部門的行爲記錄——從黑人在羈押期間受虐待，到擾亂黑人羣體中無辜民衆生活的攔阻搜身(stop-and-frisk)政策，以及在逮捕涉毒人員及判刑方面存在的種族歧視現象——你肯定會得出上述結論。

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，如果只是單純地擺事實，有些人就會竭力轉換話題。“黑人對黑人的犯罪呢？”“黑人的家庭問題呢？”好像這些問題的存在就能證明削弱一整個羣體的權利是合理的。

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.

至於身爲共和國公民的黑人與其政府之間的關係，好像就無話可談了。在弗格森鎮，黑人少年布朗之死引發了和平抗議，而政府的反應是派出一支形似侵略軍的軍事化警察部隊，他們把武器對準了手無寸鐵的平民們。我們將這駭人的景象與今年早些時候發生在猶他州邦迪農場的事件比較一下，當時白人農場主們——其中不少人拿着武器——抗議他們所說的聯邦政府的過界行爲。相比之下，聯邦官員和農場主們的對峙相當平靜，雙方之間沒爆發衝突。

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.

美國不堪的種族歷史繼續困擾着我們。黑人還不是完全意義上的公民。傑斐遜對奴隸制及白人至上主義的遺留問題的預測，有時會使他遭到詆譭，但他的先見之明超出許多人所願意承認的。

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

本文作者爲哈佛法學院(Harvard Law School)教授，2009年獲普利策(Pulitzer Prize)歷史獎