奥巴马的原罪（上）| 卫报
In the first hours of the new year in 2009, just weeks before Barack Obama was to be inaugurated as the next president, shots rang out in Oakland, California. A transit officer named Johannes Mehserle shot an unarmed 22-year-old black man who lay face-down in handcuffs on a public transportation platform. His name was .
2019年新年的头几个小时，贝拉克·奥巴马就任下一届美国总统前数周，枪声在加州奥克兰响起。一个名叫约翰内斯·梅瑟尔的交通警察在公交站击毙了一名22岁的黑人奥斯卡·格兰特，这名黑人趴在地上，双手被铐。
Dozens of witnesses, many of whom were returning to Oakland after New Year’s Eve celebrations, watched in horror. Some his killing on smartphones. Shortly afterward, black Oakland exploded in palpable anger, with hundreds, then thousands of people taking to the streets, demanding justice.
数十名目击者目瞪口呆，当时许多人在新年夜欢庆后回到奥克兰。有人用智能手机拍下杀戮过程。很快，奥克兰黑人群情激昂，开始数百人，后来达数千人走上街头，呼吁正义。
Perhaps this outcry would have happened under any circumstance, but the brutality of Grant’s death in the few weeks before the country’s first black president was to take office felt like a shock of cold water.
这种愤怒大抵任何情况下都会爆发，可格兰特暴死就发生在第一位黑人总统即将就任几周前，这让人感觉被泼了一盆冷水。
Police brutality had long been a fact of life in California, but the country was supposed to have entered into a post-racial parallel universe. The optimism that coursed through black America in 2008 seemed a million miles away.
警方的野蛮在加州已成家常便饭，可既然这个国家被认为进入了一个后种族的平行宇宙，2008年奔流在美国黑人中的乐观主义如今看来却遥不可及。
A local movement led by Grant’s family unfolded across the Bay Area to demand that prosecutors charge and try Mehserle. Protests, marches, campus activism, public forums and organizing meetings sustained enough pressure to force local officials to charge Mehserle with murder.
格兰特家人领导的一个当地运动在整个湾区展开，他们要求检察官起诉并审判梅瑟尔。抗议、游行、大学活动、公共论坛和各种会议持续施压，迫使当地官员以谋杀罪起诉梅瑟尔。
It was the first murder trial of a California police officer for a “line of duty” killing in 15 years. In the end, Mehserle, convicted of involuntary manslaughter, spent less than a year in prison, but the local movement foreshadowed events to come.
这是15年来加州警察首次因“执行公务”接受谋杀审判。最后，梅瑟尔被控过失杀人，在监狱呆了不到一年，但这一运动预示了即将发生的事。
As for President Obama, he turned out to be very different from candidate Obama, who had stage-managed his campaign to resemble something closer to a social movement. He had conjured much hope, especially among African Americans – but with great expectations came even greater disappointments.
总统奥巴马和候选人奥巴马全然不同，作为候选人的他曾让竞选活动走近社会运动，他唤起莫大的希望，尤其是非裔美国人，可希望越大，失望越大。
‘Yes, we can’
“是的，我们可以”
In the heated race for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Obama distinguished himself from the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, by campaigning clearly against the war in Iraq and vowing to shut down the Guantánamo military internment camp.
2008年竞争激烈的民主党提名中，奥巴马与当权派候选人希拉里不同，他明确反对伊拉克战争，宣布要关闭关塔那摩军事收容所。
As the campaign continued, he spoke of economic inequality and connected with young people who were underwhelmed at the prospect of voting for yet another old, white windbag in the form of John McCain.
随着选战继续，他说到经济不平等，和年轻人打成一片，年轻人不愿投票选出麦凯恩那样又一个满嘴官话的老迈的白人。
Black people’s enthusiasm for the Obama campaign could not be reduced to racial solidarity. Obama electrified his audiences, as in from January 2008, after the New Hampshire primary: We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.
黑人支持奥巴马竞选不能被归结为种族团结。奥巴马2008年1月新罕布什尔州初选后的这篇演讲令听众激动不已。
But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we’ve been told we’re not ready or that we shouldn’t try or that we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: yes, we can.
可就在美国这个难以置信的故事中，希望从来都不是虚假的。当我们面对不可能之事，当我们被认为没有准备好，或我们不该去尝试也不能去尝试时，一代又一代的美国人用一个简单的道理加以回应，它统领着人民的精神：是的，我们可以。
Yes, we can. Yes, we can.
是的，我们可以。是的，我们可以。
It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: yes, we can.
这个道理写进了建国的文件中，它决定了民族的命运：是的，我们可以。
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights: yes, we can.
奴隶和废奴者在最黑暗的夜晚开辟自由之路时低声传诵着：是的，我们可以。
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness: yes, we can … Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can.
来自遥远彼岸的移民和深入西部荒野的开拓者传唱着：是的，我们可以……是的，我们可以治愈这个民族。是的，我们可以改正这个世界。是的，我们可以。
But it was only in March 2008 that Obama finally gave a , in which he pulled off the feat of addressing the concerns of African Americans while calming the fears of white voters.
2008年3月，奥巴马终于对种族做了全面的阐释，演讲中他承诺要回应非裔美国人的关切，同时安抚白人选民的担忧。
Obama had been pressured for weeks to rebuke his pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, who had delivered a sermon titled , referring to the wrong the United States had committed in the world. Obama’s political enemies had unearthed the sermon and tried to attribute Wright’s ideas to Obama.
奥巴马数周来一直受到压力，敦促他谴责自己的牧师耶利米·怀特。怀特有一份布道辞题目是《上帝诅咒美国》，谈论美国在世界上犯的错。奥巴马的政敌翻出这份布道，想把怀特的观点加给奥巴马。
Obama used his platform in Philadelphia to distance himself from Wright, whom he described as “divisive” and with a “profoundly distorted view of this country”.
奥巴马利用在费城演讲的机会和怀特做了分割，他说怀特“意图分裂”，“对这个国家的看法扭曲”。
He went on to contextualize Wright’s angry comments and condemnations as based on his having come of age in a US where legalized discrimination – where black people were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions or the police force or the fire department – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations.
他又把怀特的愤怒言论和谴责放在语境中加以解释，认为那基于他成长在一个歧视被合法化的美国，常常以暴力的方式让黑人没有产权，不给非裔美国人发放贷款，黑人房主无法获得联邦住宅管理局的按揭，黑人不准加入工会、警察局或消防队，这意味着黑人家庭无法集聚馈赠给下一代的财富。
No one running for president had ever spoken so directly about the history of racism in government and society at large.
任何一个竞选总统的人都未曾如此直白地讲出政府和社会中存在的种族主义历史。
Yet Obama’s speech also counseled that a more perfect United States required African Americans “taking full responsibility for our own lives … by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.”
但奥巴马还建议，一个更完美的美国需要非裔美国人“承担自己生活中的全部责任……对父辈提出更多要求，花更多时间陪子女，为他们阅读，让他们明白当他们在自己生活中面临挑战和歧视时，他们永远不能失望或愤世嫉俗，他们要一直相信他们可以书写自己的命运。”
Obama couched his comments in the language of American progress and the vitality of the American dream, but the speech was remarkable nonetheless in the theater of American politics, where cowardice and empty rhetoric are the typical fare.
尽管奥巴马仍然借用美国进步和美国梦的活力表达自己的观点，可他的演讲在充斥着懦弱和空谈的美国政坛尤显不凡。
In that sense Obama broke the mold, but he also established the terms upon which he would engage race matters: with dubious even-handedness, even in response to events that required decisive action on behalf of the racially aggrieved.
在那种意义上，奥巴马打破了藩篱，可他也构建了应对种族问题的套路：暧昧、不偏不倚，即使应对那些种族权利被侵害而需要采取果断行动的事也无所作为。
He spoke quite eloquently about the nation’s “original sin” and “dark history” but has repeatedly failed to connect the sins of the past to the crimes of the present, when racism thrives, when police stop-and-frisk, when subprime loans are reserved for black buyers, when public schools are denied resources, and when double-digit unemployment has become so normal that it barely registers a ripple of recognition.
谈起国家的“原罪”和“黑历史”，他滔滔不绝，可当种族主义抬头，警察拦截搜查，黑人买方只能用次级贷款，公立学校缺少投入，两位数的失业率如此普遍令人熟视无睹时，他从来无法将过去的原罪与当下的犯罪勾连起来。
Before Ferguson, Obama’s Philadelphia speech was as close as he had ever come to speaking truthfully about racism in the US, even though he presented himself as an interested observer, a thoughtful interlocutor between African Americans and the country as a whole, rather than a US senator with the political influence to effect the changes of which he spoke.
弗格森事件之前，奥巴马的费城演讲差不多是他对美国的种族主义最直言不讳的一次，虽然他称自己是有所关切的观察者、非裔美国人和整个国家之间一个深邃的对话者，而非一个打算通过政治影响力推动变革的美国参议员。
The ‘informed observer’
Obama would continue in his role as “informed observer” even as president. Obama has and will always poll high among African Americans, but that should not be mistaken for blind support for him or the policies he champions.
当了总统的奥巴马还是那个“洞悉一切的观察者”，他在非裔美国人中人气很高，未来也是如此，可这并不等于他们会盲目支持他或他主张的政策。
As long as members of the Republican party treat Obama in a brazenly racist manner, black people will defend him because they understand that those attacks against Obama serve as a proxy for attacks on them.
只要共和党人肆无忌惮地以种族主义方式对待奥巴马，黑人就会捍卫他，因为他们明白这些对奥巴马的攻击实际上是对他们的攻击。
Early in his administration, however, with the full effects of the recession still pulsing in black communities, conflict between the black president and his base could be detected. Black America was in the midst of an “economic freefall” as black wealth disappeared. As black unemployment was climbing into the high double digits, civil rights leaders asked Obama if he would craft policies to address black joblessness.
然而执政早期，经济衰退仍然深刻影响着黑人社区，人们感觉得到这位黑人总统和他大本营之间的冲突。美国黑人处于“经济自由落体”中，黑人财富蒸发殆尽。黑人失业率攀升至两位数，民权领导人要求奥巴马采取政策解决黑人没有工作的问题。
He , “I have a special responsibility to look out for the interests of every American. That’s my job as president of the United States. And I wake up every morning trying to promote the kinds of policies that are going to make the biggest difference for the most number of people so that they can live out their American dream.”
他回答说，“我有特别的责任照管每个美国人的利益，这是美国总统的工作。我每天早上醒来都想推动让最多数人发生最大变化的政策，让他们能够实现自己的美国梦。”
It was a disappointing response, even if that disappointment did not manifest itself in his approval ratings. In 2011, with black unemployment above 13%, 86% of black Americans approved of the overall job the president was doing, but 56% expressed disappointment in the “area of providing proper oversight for Wall Street and the big banks”.
这一回答令人失望，尽管失望之情并未反映在支持率中。2011年，黑人失业率高达13%，86%的黑人赞同总统的整体工作，可56%的人对“监管华尔街和大银行方面”表示失望。
For African Americans, Obama’s presidency had been largely defined by his reluctance to engage with the ways that racial discrimination was blunting the impact of his administration’s recovery efforts.
对于非裔美国人而言，奥巴马总统任期的主要特点是，他不愿让种族歧视削弱政府救助计划。
Obama has not shown nearly the same reticence when publicly chastising African Americans for a range of behaviors that read like a handbook on anti-black stereotypes, from and dietary choices to sexual mores and television-watching habits.
奥巴马公开训斥非裔美国人的一系列行为时可没那么含蓄，那听起来像反对黑人的老套教科书，其中既包括育儿技巧、饮食选择，也有性风俗和看电视的习惯。
There is something disingenuous in focusing on poor and working-class black people without any discussion about the ways that the criminal justice system has “disappeared” black parents from the lives of their children.
不谈刑事司法体系让黑人父母在孩子们的生命中“消失”，只针对穷人和黑人工人阶级，这有点虚伪。
When Obama talks about , he never mentions the disparity in arrests and sentencing that is responsible for the disproportionate number of missing black men.
奥巴马说黑人父亲缺位时，从未提及逮捕和判刑要为黑人男性数量不成比例负责。
Few media discussions about Obama’s candidacy mentioned curbing the nation’s criminal justice system’s voracious appetite for black bodies: a million African Americans are incarcerated, and one in four black men between 20 and 29 are under the control of the criminal justice system.
对奥巴马成为候选人的媒体讨论中很少涉及遏制国家刑事司法系统对黑人的贪婪食欲：100万非裔美国人被囚禁，四分之一20到29岁间的黑人受到刑事司法体系控制。
Over the course of his first term, Obama paid no special attention to the mounting issues involving law enforcement and imprisonment, even as Michelle Alexander’s described the horrors that mass incarceration and corruption throughout the legal system had inflicted on black families.
第一任期内，奥巴马并未对执法和监禁等严重问题予以特别关注，即便米歇尔·亚历山大的《新吉姆·克劳主义》一书中描述了大规模监禁和遍布司法系统的腐败给美国黑人家庭造成的恐怖。
None of this began with Obama, but it would be naive to think that African Americans were not considering the destructive impact of policing and incarceration when they turned out in droves to elect him. His unwillingness to address the effects of structural inequality eroded younger African Americans’ confidence in the transformative capacity of his presidency.
这并非源于奥巴马，以为非裔美国人成群结队地去选举他时没考虑到警方和监禁的毁灭性影响，这也太过天真。他不愿解决结构性不平等造成的后果，这削弱了更年轻的非裔美国人对总统能否带来变革的信心。
The legacy of the ‘American spring’
“美国之春”的遗产
There was one moment when black America collectively came to terms with Barack Obama’s refusal to use his position as president to intervene on behalf of African Americans.
终于，美国黑人集体与奥巴马对峙，当时奥巴马拒绝以总统名义为非裔美国人出面干预。
Troy Davis was a black man on death row in the state of Georgia. It was that he had been wrongfully convicted, which would mean that in the fall of 2011 he was facing execution for a crime he had not committed.
特洛伊·戴维斯是佐治亚州的一名死刑犯。大家都认为他被冤枉了，这意味着2011年秋天，他会因自己没有犯过的罪行被执行死刑。
Davis’s cries of innocence were not a voice in the wilderness: for years he and his sister, Martina Davis-Correia, had joined with anti-death-penalty activists to fight for his life and exoneration.
戴维斯的喊冤并非只在草野，多年来，他和妹妹玛蒂娜·戴维斯-科里亚与反对死刑的活动者联手为自己的生命而战，争取脱罪。
By September 2011, an international campaign was under way to have him removed from death row. The protests grew larger and more frantic as the death date crept closer. There were protests around the world; support from global dignitaries rolled in as the international movement to stop Davis’s execution took shape.
2011年9月，一个国际运动旨在把他从刑场救下来。执行日期将近，抗议日益壮大和强烈。世界各处都引发了抗议，来自全球名人的支持此起彼伏，试图阻止对戴维斯执行死刑。
The European Union and the governments of France and Germany implored the United States to halt his execution, as did Amnesty International and the former FBI director William Sessions.
欧盟、法国政府以及德国政府恳求美国叫停执行，此外还有大赦国际和前联邦调查局局长威廉·塞申斯。
A Democrat in the Georgia senate, Vincent Fort, called on those charged with carrying out the execution to refuse to do it: “We call on the members of the Injection Team: Strike! Do not follow your orders! Do not start the flow of the lethal injection chemicals.”
佐治亚参议院的民主党人文森特·福特呼吁负责执行死刑的人拒绝行刑：“我们呼吁注射队成员：反抗！不要执行命令！不要注射致命化学物！”
As Davis’s execution drew near on the evening of 20 September, people from around the world waited for Obama to say or do something – but, in the end, . He never even made a statement, instead sending press secretary Jay Carney to deliver a statement on his behalf, which simply noted that it was not “appropriate” for the president to intervene in a state-led prosecution.
9月20日晚间行刑时间临近，全世界的人都等待奥巴马做点什么，可最后他什么都没做。他甚至都没有发表一项声明，只让新闻官杰·卡尼替他发表声明，只提到总统干预各州负责的检控是“不合适的”。
In the end, the black president succumbed to states’ rights.
最终，这位黑人总统向州权低头。
It was a moment of awakening for “Generation O” – and of newfound understanding of the limits of black presidential power, not because Obama could not intervene, as his handlers insisted, but because he refused to do so.
这是“奥世代”觉醒的时刻，他们对黑人总统权力的限度有了新的理解，不是奥巴马不能干预，是他拒绝这样做。
The Troy Davis protests were certainly not in vain. The day after the state of Georgia killed Davis, Amnesty International and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty called for a “Day of Outrage” in protest. More than a thousand people marched, eventually making their way to a small encampment on Wall Street that was calling itself “Occupy Wall Street”.
特洛伊·戴维斯抗议并非徒劳无益。佐治亚州处决戴维斯的第二天，大赦国际和终止死刑运动呼吁举行“暴行日”抗议。超过一千人走上街头，一路走到华尔街，在那里安营扎寨，他们自称“占领华尔街”。
The Occupy encampment had begun a week or so before Davis was killed, but it was in its fledgling stages. When the Troy Davis activists converged with the Occupy activists, the protesters made an immediate connection between Occupy’s mobilization against inequality and the injustice in the execution of a working-class black man.
占领行为在戴维斯死前一周左右就开始了，但羽翼未丰。戴维斯活动者和占领华尔街活动者合流后，抗议活动迅速把反对不公平的占领行动和处决一名工人阶级黑人的不公正结合起来。
After the march, many who had been activated by the protests for Davis stayed and became a part of the Occupy encampment on Wall Street. Thereafter, a popular chant on the Occupy marches was “We are all Troy Davis”.
游行之后，许多戴维斯抗议者成为占领华尔街的一部分。后来占领行动的一个口号是“我们都是特洛伊·戴维斯”。
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