弗格森案折射美国人对司法系统看法的种族鸿沟

弗格森案折射美国人对司法系统看法的种族鸿沟

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.

保罗·麦克莱蒙(Paul McLemore)是首位非洲裔新泽西州警官。1967年，在纽瓦克，一名警察殴打一名黑人出租车司机，引发了26人致死的骚乱，那期间麦克莱蒙就在街上执勤。之后，他当了几十年的民权律师，又在特伦顿当了好些年的市级法官。他的妻子和孩子均已事业有成。

“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.

人们认为47年前的纽瓦克缺乏公正。麦克莱蒙本周二接受采访时说，与纽瓦克的骚乱相比，“当然如今已经有了很大的进步”。但是，当被问及年轻黑人男子如今能否获得公正对待时，麦克莱蒙给予了一个截然不同的回答。

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

“完全不能，”他说。“种族歧视很普遍，来自白人的种族主义。”

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.

对于白人和黑人来说，在密苏里州弗格森警察达伦·威尔逊(Darren Wilson)枪击年轻黑人男子迈克尔·布朗(Michael Brown)致死一案中，大陪审团不对威尔逊提出刑事指控的决定，可能印证了那种双重性：变化很大，但没有任何改变。

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.

美国有了一个非洲裔的总统，还有相当多的黑人中产阶级，即便他们的处境堪忧，但这个国家对于司法系统的态度，一如数十年前，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.

即便其他一些族裔鸿沟有缩小的迹象，白人和黑人对于司法系统仍然存在深刻分歧，这也许并不像听上去那么奇怪。法律和法院裁决这几十年来的变化，意味着这两个族裔现在可以一起工作，一起运动，一起上学。但他们回到家后，往往身处不同的环境，这些环境对于警察与法院的态度和体验不仅不同，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，在所有年龄段的黑人男性中，有3%身陷囹圄，白人的这个比例只有0.5%。2011年，每15名非洲裔儿童中，就有一名有一个家长在坐牢，白人儿童的这个比例是每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.

哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)法学教授帕特里夏·J·威廉斯(Patricia J. Williams)说，在反毒活动中，黑人受到的打击严重得不成比例——2011年在加利福尼亚州，在涉及大麻的重罪上，黑人男子遭到监禁的可能性是白人男人的11倍——由于有累犯加长刑期的法律，很多人被关在监狱里。

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.

在这些差别之外，“就是一些小事情，比如拦下黑人搜身、种族定性，以及耗资巨大的‘集中严打’执法战术”——把大量警员集中到犯罪率高的区域——强化了黑人对司法系统的消极态度，她说。

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)现年26岁，在丹佛的一个白人中上阶层郊区长大，了解黑人和白人双方的态度。威利说，他曾认为自己的种族并不重要——他可以“选择不带有黑人的那部分负面形象”，但弗格森枪击案彻底打消了他的这种念头。

“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.

“我成长在经济条件非常优渥的环境中，”他说，“但仍然因为我的人种、年龄和性别，在某些情况下，被别人认为是一个威胁。当我走在街上，他们看不到我的SAT分数，他们看到的是一个黑人。

“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.”

“在我看来，大部分白人都没有恶意，他们只是对此浑然不觉。我认为，这方面有大量工作要做。”