弗格森案折射美國人對司法系統(tǒng)看法的種族鴻溝

弗格森案折射美國人對司法系統(tǒng)看法的種族鴻溝

Paul McLemore, the first African-American to become a New Jersey state trooper, was on the streets of Newark in 1967 when riots following a police beating of a black taxi driver left 26 dead. He spent decades as a civil rights lawyer and years as a municipal judge in Trenton. His wife and children have gone on to enjoy accomplished careers.

保羅·麥克萊蒙(Paul McLemore)是首位非洲裔新澤西州警官。1967年，在紐瓦克，一名警察毆打一名黑人出租車司機(jī)，引發(fā)了26人致死的騷亂，那期間麥克萊蒙就在街上執(zhí)勤。之后，他當(dāng)了幾十年的民權(quán)律師，又在特倫頓當(dāng)了好些年的市級(jí)法官。他的妻子和孩子均已事業(yè)有成。

“Of course, there’s been a lot of progress” since Newark’s days of rage, he said in an interview on Tuesday. But asked whether a young black man today could find the justice that was believed to be absent in Newark 47 years ago, he gave a response that was starkly different.

人們認(rèn)為47年前的紐瓦克缺乏公正。麥克萊蒙本周二接受采訪時(shí)說，與紐瓦克的騷亂相比，“當(dāng)然如今已經(jīng)有了很大的進(jìn)步”。但是，當(dāng)被問及年輕黑人男子如今能否獲得公正對待時(shí)，麥克萊蒙給予了一個(gè)截然不同的回答。

“No, period,” he said. “There’s pervasive racism — white racism.”

“完全不能，”他說。“種族歧視很普遍，來自白人的種族主義。”

For whites and blacks alike, that duality may be the takeaway from a grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson, a Ferguson, Mo., police officer, in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a young black man: Much has changed, and nothing has changed.

對于白人和黑人來說，在密蘇里州弗格森警察達(dá)倫·威爾遜(Darren Wilson)槍擊年輕黑人男子邁克爾·布朗(Michael Brown)致死一案中，大陪審團(tuán)不對威爾遜提出刑事指控的決定，可能印證了那種雙重性：變化很大，但沒有任何改變。

A nation with an African-American president and a significant, if struggling, black middle class remains as deeply divided about the justice system as it was decades ago.

美國有了一個(gè)非洲裔的總統(tǒng)，還有相當(dāng)多的黑人中產(chǎn)階級(jí)，即便他們的處境堪憂，但這個(gè)國家對于司法系統(tǒng)的態(tài)度，一如數(shù)十年前，仍然存在深深的分歧。

That whites and blacks disagree so deeply on the justice system, even as some other racial gulfs show signs of closing, is perhaps not as odd as it seems. Decades of changing laws and court decisions mean that the two races now work together, play sports together, attend school together. But they frequently go home to separate worlds where attitudes and experiences toward the police and courts not only are not shared, but are not even understood across the racial divide.

即便其他一些族裔鴻溝有縮小的跡象，白人和黑人對于司法系統(tǒng)仍然存在深刻分歧，這也許并不像聽上去那么奇怪。法律和法院裁決這幾十年來的變化，意味著這兩個(gè)族裔現(xiàn)在可以一起工作，一起運(yùn)動(dòng)，一起上學(xué)。但他們回到家后，往往身處不同的環(huán)境，這些環(huán)境對于警察與法院的態(tài)度和體驗(yàn)不僅不同，甚至不能跨越族裔界限，相互理解。

At the end of 2013, 3 percent of all black males of any age were imprisoned, compared with 0.5 percent of whites. In 2011, one in 15 African-American children had a parent in prison, compared with one in 111 white children.

2013年底，在所有年齡段的黑人男性中，有3%身陷囹圄，白人的這個(gè)比例只有0.5%。2011年，每15名非洲裔兒童中，就有一名有一個(gè)家長在坐牢，白人兒童的這個(gè)比例是每111名中有一名。

Patricia J. Williams, a Columbia University law professor, said that the war on drugs disproportionately affected blacks — in California in 2011, a black man was 11 times more likely than a white to be jailed for a marijuana felony — and that three-strikes laws kept many in jail.

哥倫比亞大學(xué)(Columbia University)法學(xué)教授帕特里夏·J·威廉斯(Patricia J. Williams)說，在反毒活動(dòng)中，黑人受到的打擊嚴(yán)重得不成比例——2011年在加利福尼亞州，在涉及大麻的重罪上，黑人男子遭到監(jiān)禁的可能性是白人男人的11倍——由于有累犯加長刑期的法律，很多人被關(guān)在監(jiān)獄里。

Beyond such disparities, “it’s the little things, like stop-and-frisk, like racial profiling and million-dollar block demarcations” — law enforcement tactics that saturate a high-crime area with police officers — that reinforce blacks’ negative attitudes toward the justice system, she said.

在這些差別之外，“就是一些小事情，比如攔下黑人搜身、種族定性，以及耗資巨大的‘集中嚴(yán)打’執(zhí)法戰(zhàn)術(shù)”——把大量警員集中到犯罪率高的區(qū)域——強(qiáng)化了黑人對司法系統(tǒng)的消極態(tài)度，她說。

Kenny Wiley, 26, a black man who grew up in a white upper-middle-class suburb of Denver, is one who has seen both sides. The Ferguson shooting, he said, destroyed any notion that his race did not matter — that he could “opt out of the negative parts of blackness.”

黑人男子肯尼·威利(Kenny Wiley)現(xiàn)年26歲，在丹佛的一個(gè)白人中上階層郊區(qū)長大，了解黑人和白人雙方的態(tài)度。威利說，他曾認(rèn)為自己的種族并不重要——他可以“選擇不帶有黑人的那部分負(fù)面形象”，但弗格森槍擊案徹底打消了他的這種念頭。

“I grew up with a lot of economic privilege,” he said, “and still because of my race and my age and my gender, I’m still in certain situations perceived as a threat. When I walk down the street, they don’t see my SAT score, they see a black man.

“我成長在經(jīng)濟(jì)條件非常優(yōu)渥的環(huán)境中，”他說，“但仍然因?yàn)槲业娜朔N、年齡和性別，在某些情況下，被別人認(rèn)為是一個(gè)威脅。當(dāng)我走在街上，他們看不到我的SAT分?jǐn)?shù)，他們看到的是一個(gè)黑人。

“I don’t believe most white people are malicious. I think most white people are oblivious. And I think that there’s a lot of work to do.”

“在我看來，大部分白人都沒有惡意，他們只是對此渾然不覺。我認(rèn)為，這方面有大量工作要做。”