What if I told you that time has a race, a race in the contemporary way that we understand race in the United States? Typically, we talk about race in terms of black and white issues. In the African-American communities from which I come, we have a long-standing multi-generational joke about what we call "CP time," or "colored people's time." Now, we no longer refer to African-Americans as "colored," but this long-standing joke about our perpetual lateness to church, to cookouts, to family events and even to our own funerals, remains.
若我告诉你们,时间有个种族, 一个我们在美国所了解与分类的种族, 你们会有什么想法? 通常,我们谈种族时会分“黑”与“白”事件来商量。 在我来自的非裔美国人社区里, 我们有个代代相传的笑话 关于我们所称的“CP时间” 或“有色人种时间”。 虽然我们现在已不称非裔美国人为“有色人种”, 但这关于我们到教堂, 到聚会,到家庭活动, 甚至到自己的葬礼都迟到的笑话还存在。
I personally am a stickler for time. It's almost as if my mother, when I was growing up, said, "We will not be those black people." So we typically arrive to events 30 minutes early.
我本身很注重时间。 好似我在长大的时候,妈妈向我强调说: “我们不会与其他‘黑人’一样。” 就这样,我们去哪里都通常早到三十分钟。
But today, I want to talk to you more about the political nature of time, for if time had a race, it would be white. White people own time.
可今天, 我想与你们探讨的是时间的政治性质, 因为时间若有个种族, 那时间肯定是白色人种。 白色人种是时间的主人。
I know, I know. Making such "incendiary statements" makes us uncomfortable: Haven't we moved past the point where race really matters? Isn't race a heavy-handed concept? Shouldn't we go ahead with our enlightened, progressive selves and relegate useless concepts like race to the dustbins of history? How will we ever get over racism if we keep on talking about race? Perhaps we should lock up our concepts of race in a time capsule, bury them and dig them up in a thousand years, peer at them with the clearly more enlightened, raceless versions of ourselves that belong to the future. But you see there, that desire to mitigate the impact of race and racism shows up in how we attempt to manage time, in the ways we narrate history, in the ways we attempt to shove the negative truths of the present into the past, in the ways we attempt to argue that the future that we hope for is the present in which we're currently living.
我知道,我知道。 这些“挑衅的陈述”会让我们不舒服。 我们不早已化解了种族的区分了吗? 种族毕竟是个粗鲁的概念, 而明智,英明的我们,是不是应该 把种族这类无用的概念给丢掉呢? 若我们一直谈种族,我们怎能希望克服种族主义呢? 也许我们得把所拥有的种族概念放进时间胶囊里, 把它埋葬。 等到一千年后, 当我们变得更开明, 当我们不再以种族分类时, 再研究我们对种族所有的概念。 但你们看, 减轻种族主义的影响是由我们 如何管理时间, 如何叙述历史, 如何把消极的真相埋进历史, 如何议论证明理想的未来 是我们现在所居住的世界,所看得出的。
Now, when Barack Obama became President of the US in 2008, many Americans declared that we were post-racial. I'm from the academy where we're enamored with being post-everything. We're postmodern, we're post-structural, we're post-feminist. "Post" has become a simple academic appendage that we apply to a range of terms to mark the way we were. But prefixes alone don't have the power to make race and racism a thing of the past. The US was never "pre-race." So to claim that we're post-race when we have yet to grapple with the impact of race on black people, Latinos or the indigenous is disingenuous. Just about the moment we were preparing to celebrate our post-racial future, our political conditions became the most racial they've been in the last 50 years.
当贝拉克·奥巴马在2008年担任美国总统时, 美国人大部分宣布美国以克服了种族观念。 我来自的学派迷恋着什么东西都得加个“后”。 我们是后现代,后结构,后女权主义者。 “后”这个字以成为了一个简单的字首。 所有个“后”字的词代表了我们之前的状况。 可单单一个字首是没有能够把种族概念与种族主义 完全消失的能力。 美国向来就有种族观念。 因此, 当我们还没完全了解到种族区分 在黑人,拉丁美洲人,和土著的影响, 要宣称自己已成为了 一个“后种族概念”的社会可不诚实。 就当我们准备庆祝 我们“后种族概念”的未来, 我们的政治环境是近50年 最关注种族的政治环境。
So today, I want to offer to you three observations, about the past, the present and the future of time, as it relates to the combating of racism and white dominance.
所以今天,我想把关于 时间的过去,现在,与未来的 三个观察与你们分享, 因为它对克服白色主义与种族主义有个联系。
First: the past. Time has a history, and so do black people. But we treat time as though it is timeless, as though it has always been this way, as though it doesn't have a political history bound up with the plunder of indigenous lands, the genocide of indigenous people and the stealing of Africans from their homeland. When white male European philosophers first thought to conceptualize time and history, one famously declared, "[Africa] is no historical part of the World." He was essentially saying that Africans were people outside of history who had had no impact on time or the march of progress.
首先,谈过去。 时间有个历史, 黑人也有个历史。 但我们把时间当成永恒, 好似一向来都是这样, 好似它与 土著的土地掠夺, 土著的种族灭绝 与非洲人的家园被偷走无关。 当欧洲白种男性思想家 起初想到把时间与历史概念化,其中一个宣布: “非洲在世界历史上没位子。” 他的含义是 非洲人在历史没部分, 对时间没影响, 对进展没贡献。
This idea, that black people have had no impact on history, is one of the foundational ideas of white supremacy. It's the reason that Carter G. Woodson created "Negro History Week" in 1926. It's the reason that we continue to celebrate Black History Month in the US every February.
这“黑人对历史没影响”的想法 是白色至上的基本思想之一。 也是卡特·伍德森在1926年创造“黑人历史周”的原因。 也是我们在美国每二月份庆祝“黑人历史月”的原因。
Now, we also see this idea that black people are people either alternately outside of the bounds of time or stuck in the past, in a scenario where, much as I'm doing right now, a black person stands up and insists that racism still matters, and a person, usually white, says to them, "Why are you stuck in the past? Why can't you move on? We have a black president. We're past all that."
我们也看得出一种概念说 黑人只能在时间的边界外面 或被卡在过去的概念, 在一个好似现在的情形, 有个黑人站起来,坚持种族主义值得我们的关注, 而有个人,通常一个白人 问他: ”你们为什么还卡在过去的概念?“ "为何不能走向未来? 我们已经有个黑人总统, 很明显看得出我们早已克服了种族主义。”
William Faulkner famously said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." But my good friend Professor Kristie Dotson says, "Our memory is longer than our lifespan." We carry, all of us, family and communal hopes and dreams with us. We don't have the luxury of letting go of the past. But sometimes, our political conditions are so troubling that we don't know if we're living in the past or we're living in the present. Take, for instance, when Black Lives Matter protesters go out to protest unjust killings of black citizens by police, and the pictures that emerge from the protest look like they could have been taken 50 years ago. The past won't let us go. But still, let us press our way into the present.
威廉·福克納曾经说过, “历史不是死的。历史根本还没过去。” 但我好朋友克莉斯蒂·多森教授说 “我们的记忆比我们的寿命长。” 我们都背着 家庭与社区的希望与梦想。 我们没法放下过去。 可有时, 我们的政治状态让人忧虑, 让我们不知道现在是活在过去 还是活在现在。 比如所,当“黑人的命也是命”抗议者 出去抗议警方不公正的杀死黑人公民, 所拍出来的照片好似有可能是在五十年前拍的。 历史可不放过我们。 研究了历史,就得看看现在的情况。
At present, I would argue that the racial struggles we are experiencing are clashes over time and space. What do I mean? Well, I've already told you that white people own time. Those in power dictate the pace of the workday. They dictate how much money our time is actually worth. And Professor George Lipsitz argues that white people even dictate the pace of social inclusion. They dictate how long it will actually take for minority groups to receive the rights that they have been fighting for.
我认为当今 所经验的种族挣扎 是关于时间与空间的挣扎。 这是什么意思呢? 我已告诉你们白人是时间的主人。 他们有权控制工作日的步伐, 有权控制时间与金钱的价值。 而乔治·利比茨教授认为 白人甚至有控制社会包容步伐的权利。 他们控制少数种族需要多长的时间 才能得到所争取的基本权利。
Let me loop back to the past quickly to give you an example. If you think about the Civil Rights Movement and the cries of its leaders for "Freedom Now," they were challenging the slow pace of white social inclusion. By 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act was passed, there had been a full 100 years between the end of the Civil War and the conferral of voting rights on African-American communities. Despite the urgency of a war, it still took a full 100 years for actual social inclusion to occur.
让我很快地从历史中举个列子。 若你们想想看, 人民权利运动领导“自由”的喊叫 是挑战白人社会包容的慢步伐。 1965年,投票权法案终于被执行, 非裔美国人得到了投票的权利, 可这个时刻离南北战争已经有整整一百年。 虽然社会的分裂是导致战争的主要原因之一, 但却需要了整整一百年才得到所欲求的社会包容。
Since 2012, conservative state legislatures across the US have ramped up attempts to roll back African-American voting rights by passing restrictive voter ID laws and curtailing early voting opportunities. This past July, a federal court struck down North Carolina's voter ID law saying it "... targeted African-Americans with surgical precision."
而自2012年, 美国保守州的立法团体设法 去掉非裔美国人的投票权利。 他们执行限制性的选民法律, 缩短早期投票的机会。 去年七月份,联邦法庭驳回了 北卡罗来纳的选民法律, 说所执行的法律“特地对准非裔美国人,”
Restricting African-American inclusion in the body politic is a primary way that we attempt to manage and control people by managing and controlling time. But another place that we see these time-space clashes is in gentrifying cities like Atlanta, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Washington, DC -- places that have had black populations for generations. But now, in the name of urban renewal and progress, these communities are pushed out, in service of bringing them into the 21st century.
限制非裔美国人的融入 是我们管理与控制时间与人的主要方式。 但有我们也在如亚特兰大,布鲁克林里 费城,新奥尔良和华盛顿特区 这些住着代代黑人的城市里 见证了同类的时间-空间的挣扎。 可现在,以城市化与进展之名, 以“把他们带进21世纪”的理由, 黑人渐渐被推出他们所居住的地方。
Professor Sharon Holland asked: What happens when a person who exists in time meets someone who only occupies space? These racial struggles are battles over those who are perceived to be space-takers and those who are perceived to be world-makers. Those who control the flow and thrust of history are considered world-makers who own and master time. In other words: white people. But when Hegel famously said that Africa was no historical part of the world, he implied that it was merely a voluminous land mass taking up space at the bottom of the globe. Africans were space-takers. So today, white people continue to control the flow and thrust of history, while too often treating black people as though we are merely taking up space to which we are not entitled. Time and the march of progress is used to justify a stunning degree of violence towards our most vulnerable populations, who, being perceived as space-takers rather than world-makers, are moved out of the places where they live, in service of bringing them into the 21st century.
雪伦·荷兰教授问道: 当一个只存在时间的人遇到一个只存在空间的人 会发生什么事? 这些种族挣扎 都是被视为空间占位者的人与 被视为世界创作者的人的战争。 控制历史走向的人, 被视为时间的主人,世界的创造者。 换句话来讲:这些人是白人。 但当黑格尔著名的说非洲不属于世界的历史, 他默示非洲只是片体积大的土地 在地球的底部占位子。 默示非洲人是空间占位者。 因此今天白人继续控制时间的走向, 而黑人被视为单单的空间占位者, 而且所占位的空间不属于我们。 时间与进展被用来辩解 我们对弱势群体暴力的一大部分。 这些弱势群体被视为 空间占位者而不是世界创造者, 被逼出所居住的地方, 以把他们带入21世纪。
Shortened life span according to zip code is just one example of the ways that time and space cohere in an unjust manner in the lives of black people. Children who are born in New Orleans zip code 70124, which is 93 percent white, can expect to live a full 25 years longer than children born in New Orleans zip code 70112, which is 60 percent black. Children born in Washington, DC's wealthy Maryland suburbs can expect to live a full 20 years longer than children born in its downtown neighborhoods.
当生命根据邮编而缩短或加长, 我们可以看出黑人得到不公平的时空凝聚 的例子之一。 新奥尔良邮编70124的社区里有93%白人, 而里面居住的孩子 可以比居住在新奥尔良邮编70112, 一个60%黑人的社区, 长活25年。 被生进华盛顿的富有马里兰郊区 比生进市中心邻里的孩子 长活20年。
Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that, "The defining feature of being drafted into the Black race is the inescapable robbery of time." We experience time discrimination, he tells us, not just as structural, but as personal: in lost moments of joy, lost moments of connection, lost quality of time with loved ones and lost years of healthy quality of life.
塔-纳伊西·科特说道: “逃不掉的时间抢劫是黑人的特征。” 我们经历的时间歧视, 不只是社会结构里的歧视, 但也是私人的歧视: 在所失去的欢乐时光, 所失去与人联系的时刻, 所失去与亲人的宝贵时光, 与所失去的健康生活水平显明。
In the future, do you see black people? Do black people have a future? What if you belong to the very race of people who have always been pitted against time? What if your group is the group for whom a future was never imagined? These time-space clashes -- between protesters and police, between gentrifiers and residents -- don't paint a very pretty picture of what America hopes for black people's future. If the present is any indicator, our children will be under-educated, health maladies will take their toll and housing will continue to be unaffordable.
你们所想象的未来有黑人的位置吗? 黑人有未来吗? 如果你们属于一向来与时间竞争的种族, 你们会做什么呢? 如果你们属于一个被忽略的种族, 你们会做什么呢? 这些时间-空间的挣扎, 抗议者与警方之间, 外人与居民之间 , 描述出一个美国对黑人 一个很惨淡的未来。 若现今状况是个指示, 非裔美国人的孩子会继续接受匮乏的教育, 疾病会持续存在, 房租会继续增加。
So if we're really ready to talk about the future, perhaps we should begin by admitting that we're out of time. We black people have always been out of time. Time does not belong to us. Our lives are lives of perpetual urgency. Time is used to displace us, or conversely, we are urged into complacency through endless calls to just be patient. But if past is prologue, let us seize upon the ways in which we're always out of time anyway to demand with urgency freedom now.
所以如果我们真正的准备谈一下未来, 也许我们应该先承认我们没时间了。 我们黑人一向来没有时间。 时间不属于我们。 我们的生命永远存在紧迫感。 时间被利用来位移我们, 或不断地叫我们有点耐心, 催我们放松心情。 但如果过去是个序幕, 那么,让我们抓住每一天, 以紧急的心态 要求我们的自由。
I believe the future is what we make it. But first, we have to decide that time belongs to all of us. No, we don't all get equal time, but we can decide that the time we do get is just and free. We can stop making your zip code the primary determinant of your lifespan. We can stop stealing learning time from black children through excessive use of suspensions and expulsions. We can stop stealing time from black people through long periods of incarceration for nonviolent crimes. The police can stop stealing time and black lives through use of excessive force.
我相信未来是由我们来创造。 但我们得先了解到:时间是我们大家的。 不,我们所拥有的时间都不一样, 但我们可以以公正的方式 利用我们的时间。 我们可以停止让邮编成为我们寿命的 主要影响因素之一。 我们可以停止以过度驱逐 从黑人孩子的身上偷走宝贵的学习时间。 我们可以停止以过度监禁 从黑人偷走时间。 警方可以控制所用的势力 以避免偷走黑人的时间和性命。
I believe the future is what we make it. But we can't get there on colored people's time or white time or your time or even my time. It's our time. Ours.
我相信未来是由我们来创造。 可我们不能仅靠有色人种的时间, 白人的时间, 你的时间, 甚至我的时间,来达到理想的未来。 时间,是我们的。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)