I was born in 1947, a long time ago, and when I was 18 months old, I had polio. I was in an iron lung for three months and in and out of the hospital for three years. Now, we had lots of neighbors in our Brooklyn neighborhood, and some of them were really very helpful for my parents. Some of them were really afraid of contagion, and they wouldn't even walk in front of our house. They would literally walk across the street. I think this was a time when my family really began to realize what disability meant to some people: fear.
我出生于1947年, 那是很久以前了, 在18个月大的时候, 我得了小儿麻痹症。 我在一个铁肺(一种呼吸器) 里待了三个月, 在医院里进进出出了三年。 我们在布鲁克林区有很多邻居, 其中的一些帮了我父母很多忙。 但是有些却十分害怕被传染, 他们甚至都不愿意走到我们的房前, (为了避免碰到我) 宁可绕路到另一条街。 我觉得 ,正是这段经历 使我的家人开始认识到 残疾对一些人意味着什么: 恐惧。
And it wasn't even a sure thing that I would live at home, although I didn't learn about this until I was 36 years old. I was having a discussion with my father one night, and he said, "You know, when you were two years old, one of the doctors suggested to your mom and I that you live in an institution, that they could just go ahead with their lives and raise their kids and kind of be done with having to deal with all the disability-related things. I didn't believe my father, not because he was a liar, but I'd never heard this story, and my mother in fact validated that. She never wanted to tell me.
我甚至都不能 确保一直住在家里, 尽管我到36岁 才听说了这段往事。 有天晚上,我在跟父亲聊天, 他说:你知道吗,你两岁的时候, 有一个医生建议你的母亲和我 让你住在一个公共机构里, 这样他们(我的父母) 就可以继续他们的生活, 抚养其他的子女, 并且不用再处理 与残疾相关的事请。 我当时不相信我的父亲, 并不是因为他是个会说谎的人, 而是我从来没听过这个故事, 然后我母亲证实了这件事。 她从来都没有想过要告诉我。
But in reality, I don't know why I was really surprised by this story, because when I was five years old, and my mother, like mothers and fathers all across the United States, was taking me to school to enroll, she pushed my wheelchair to the school in walking distance to our house, pulled the wheelchair up the steps into the school, and we were greeted by the principal. Not really greeted. But the principal said, no, I couldn't come to that school because it wasn't accessible. But he told us not to worry, because the Board of Education in fact would send a teacher to my house. And they did for a total of two and a half hours a week.
但实际上,我不明白为什么 我对这件事感到非常惊讶, 因为在我五岁的时候, 我的母亲,跟美国所有的父母一样, 要带我去学校办理入学手续, 她推着轮椅上的我 到离我家步行距离的学校, 把轮椅抬上台阶,进入学校, 然后我们受到了校长的迎接。 其实不能算是迎接。 校长表示了歉意, 说我不能来这儿上学, 因为这里不方便轮椅进出。 但是他告诉我们不要着急, 因为教育局将派一名老师到我家。 他们真的这样做了, 只不过总共是两个半小时, 每周。
(Audience murmurs)
(观众低语)
But for good behavior, they threw in an occupational therapist who taught me that very essential skill of cross-stitching.
同时为了表达善意, 他们派来了一个职业治疗师 他教了我非常必要的技能— 十字绣。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
I don't cross-stitch today.
现在我可不做十字绣。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
I didn't actually get to go to school in a real building until I was nine years old, and then I was in classes only with disabled children in a school that had mainly nondisabled children. And in my classes, there were students up to the age of 21. And then, after 21, they went to something called sheltered workshops with menial work and earning either nothing or below minimum wage. So I understood discrimination. My parents understood discrimination.
九岁之前我都没有去过 一个真正意义上的学校, 之后我也被分在 只有残疾孩子的班里, 尽管这个学校的大部分学生 都是健全的孩子。 在我的班里, 有些学生都已经21岁了。 超过21岁之后, 就会去一些叫做 “庇护工场”的地方。 做一些卑微的工作。 要么没有工资,就算有, 也低于最低工资标准。 于是我懂得了什么是歧视。 我的父母也懂得。
My parents came from Germany. They were German Jews who left in the 1930s, escaping the Holocaust. My parents lost family and they lost parents. Both my parents lost their parents in the Holocaust. And so they realized that they could not be silent as things were going wrong for me in my life. Not me personally, but what was going on around me.
我的父母来自德国。 他们是30年代 离开德国的犹太人, 为了逃离那场大屠杀。 我的父母失去了他们的家庭, 在大屠杀中都失去了各自的父母。 所以他们明白 他们不能保持沉默, 因为发生在我身上的事太不公正。 不仅仅是我个人, 而且是发生在我周围的人与事。
They learned that because I used a wheelchair, none of the high schools in New York City, in the entire city, were wheelchair accessible, so what was supposed to happen is I was supposed to go back onto home instruction along with many other students. So my parents banded together with other parents. They went to the Board of Education and they demanded that the Board of Ed make some of the high schools accessible. And they did. And so I and many others were finally able to go to high school, a regular high school, and take regular classes.
他们深知这些不公正 是因为我使用轮椅, 在整个纽约市的所有高中里, 没有一所是轮椅能推进的, 所以当时最有可能的情况 是我和其他不能 正常上学的学生一起, 接受家庭辅导。 所以我的父母跟其他父母联合起来。 他们一起去了教育局, 提出让教育局强制要求 部分高中建设无障碍通道。 教育局做到了。 由此,我和其他许多残障学生一起 终于能上一个普通高中, 上与所有人一样的课程。
So what happened next? I was learning more and more about what discrimination was, and equally important, I was learning that I needed to become my own advocate. I was entering college, Long Island University, and I had always wanted to be a teacher, and so I minored in education and I took all the appropriate courses, and then when it was time for me to go for my license, I had to take a written exam, an oral exam and a medical exam. At that time, all three of those exams were given in completely inaccessible buildings, so I had friends who carried me up and down the steps for these exams, not in a motorized wheelchair.
那么接下来又了发生什么呢? 我渐渐对什么是歧视 有了更深入的认知, 同样重要的是,我渐渐 明白我需要为自己发声。 我进入了大学,长岛大学, 我一直梦想成为一名教师, 所以我辅修了教育学, 我上完了所有该上的课, 当我准备去考 教师执业资格证时, 我需要通过一场笔试, 一场面试, 以及一次体检。 那时,这三场考试 都是在完全没有无障碍设施的 建筑中进行的, 所以我只有找我的朋友帮忙, 在考试期间将我抬上抬下, 那会儿我可没有电动轮椅。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
In a manual wheelchair. But I passed my oral exam. I passed my written exam.
那时还是手动的轮椅。 最后我成功通过了口试。 也通过了笔试。
My medical exam was something completely different. One of the first questions the doctor asked me was, could I please show her how I went to the bathroom. I was 22 years old and you know when you go for any kind of an interview, you think about all the kinds of questions that people could ask you?
但到了体检这儿, 事情就不那么顺利了。 为我体检的医生 问我的第一个问题就是, 能否展示给她看 我是如何上厕所的。 我那年22岁。 你要知道,无论你去怎样的面试之前, 都会去设想各种可能被问到的问题。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
That was not one of them. And I was freaked out in the first place because I had heard that there were actually no disabled people using wheelchairs who were teachers in New York, so each step along the way I was expecting something bad. So I said to her, is it a requirement that teachers show their students how to go to the bathroom? If it is, I can do that.
但怎么也想不到这样的问题吧! 我当时也懵了, 因为我之前就了解到 到那时为止,纽约还没有一名 身体残疾的老师, 所以我对面试中每一步可能会 碰到些麻烦,多少都有些心理准备。 所以我问她, 有没有要求规定 老师需要给学生展示 如何去厕所? 如果有这个要求, 我就演示给你看。
So no surprise, I was failed because I didn't pass the medical. The official reason that I was denied my job was paralysis of poliomyelitis sequelae of -- I'm sorry. Paralysis of both lower limbs, sequelae of poliomyelitis. Honestly, I didn't know what the word "sequelae" meant, so I went to the dictionary, and it meant "because of." So I'd been denied my license because I couldn't walk.
不出所料, 我没有被录取, 因为我的体检结果不合格。 我被禁止从业的官方解释是: 小儿麻痹症瘫痪后遗。。。抱歉。 双下肢瘫痪, 小儿麻痹症的后遗症。 老实说,我都不知道 “后遗”是什么意思, 所以我去查了字典 字典上的解释是“由于”。 也就是说,我仅仅因为不能走路 而无法获得教师资格证。
So what was I going to do? This is a really important time in my life, because it would be the first time that I really would be challenging the system, me, and although I was working with a lot of other friends who had disabilities who were encouraging me to move forward with this, it was nonetheless quite frightening. But I was really very lucky. I had a friend who was a disabled student at Long Island University and was also a stringer at the "New York Times," and he was able to get a reporter to write a really good piece about what had happened and why he thought what had happened was wrong. The next day there was an editorial in the "New York Times" with the title of "Heumann v. The Board of Education" and the "New York Times" came out in support of my getting my teaching license.
那我该做什么呢? 这是我一生中的关键时期, 因为这曾是我第一次 真正地要与现有的体制进行抗争, 尽管当时和我一起的 许多同样身患残疾的朋友们 都鼓励并支持着我, 尽管如此,这还是 很令人胆怯的。 但我最后运气不错。 我的一名身患残疾的朋友, 曾也是长岛大学的学生, 他当时是《纽约时报》的兼职记者, 他帮我找到了一名职业记者, 写了一篇非常好的 文章来阐述现状, 以及为什么这样的现状 在他看来是不正确的。 第二天,在纽约时报上 就有了一篇社论, 标题是《休曼与教育局之争》, 而且当时纽约时报也站出来声援, 意图帮助我拿到教师执照。
(Applause)
(掌声)
And then the same day, I got a call from an attorney who was writing a book about civil rights. And he was calling me to interview me, and I was interviewing him. He didn't know that. And at the end of our discussion, I said, "Would you be willing to represent me? I want to sue the Board of Education." And he said yes. Now, sometimes I say that the stars were aligned around this court case, because we had an amazing judge: the first African American female federal judge --
在同一天, 我接到了一名律师的电话, 他在写一本关于公民权利的的书。 他说他期望能与我进行一次面谈, 但实际上,我当时也在审核他。 他并不知道这点。 然后在面谈结束时,我问, 你愿意代表我 对教育局提起诉讼吗? 他同意了。 有时候我会说, 这场官司赢的真是太幸运了, 因为我们当时有一名出色的法官: 她是第一位非裔美籍女法官——
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Constance Baker Motley.
康斯坦斯·贝克·莫特利。
(Applause)
(掌声)
And she knew discrimination when she saw it.
她一眼就看出, 这是赤裸裸的歧视问题。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
So she strongly encouraged the Board of Ed to give me another medical exam, which they did. And then I got my license, and while it took a number of months for me to actually get a principal to offer me a job, I finally did get a job and I started teaching that fall in the same school that I had gone to, second grade. So --
于是,她强烈建议了教育局 再次为我安排医学体检, 教育局照做了。 由此,我获得了教师执照, 又花了几个月的时间, 终于有一名校长决定聘用我了。 我终于得到了一份工作, 从那个秋天开始了我的教师生涯, 就在我曾就读的那个学校, 教二年级。 所以——
(Applause)
(掌声)
That's a whole other TED Talk.
这就是另外一个故事了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
But I was learning as my friends were, and people I didn't know around the country, that we had to be our own advocates, that we needed to fight back people's view that if you had a disability, you needed to be cured, that equality was not part of the equation. And we were learning from the Civil Rights Movement and from the Women's Rights Movement. We were learning from them about their activism and their ability to come together, not only to discuss problems but to discuss solutions. And what was born is what we call today the Disability Rights Movement.
我和我的朋友们, 以及全球更多我并不认识的 残障人士都从中学到了, 我们必须为自己发声, 我们必须自己去 反击大众错误的观念, 去反击人们认为残障人士 就应该呆在医院里接受治疗, 去反击人们用双重标准 衡量残障人士。 我们从过去的公民权利运动 和女权运动中学习。 我们学习他们的维权意识, 和他们愿意团结一致的决心, 不仅仅要抛出问题, 还要讨论实质的解决方案。 由此就诞生了今天人们所称的 残疾人权利运动。
So I'd like to tell you a couple of riddles. How many people do you think it takes to stop traffic on Madison Avenue during rush hour in New York City? Do you have a guess? How many?
我来给你们出几个问答题。 你觉得多少人聚集起来足够 在高峰时段 挡住纽约麦迪逊大道上的车流? 想好了吗?
(Audience members shout out answers)
(观众席中有人喊出)
Fifty. One would be too little. Fifty people. And there were no accessible paddy wagons, so they had to just kind of deal with us.
五十。 一个人太少啦。 五十个人差不多。 反正警察也会拿我们没办法, 因为他们监狱的大巴不能上轮椅, 所以他们没辙,只能跟我们谈判。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
(Applause)
(掌声)
But let me tell you another riddle. How many people does it take to stop a bus in New York City when they refuse to let you on because you're in a wheelchair? One. That is the right answer. So what you have to do though is take your wheelchair --
再来一个。 你们觉得当巴士因为 你坐轮椅而拒载你时, 需要多少人可以 阻挡一辆纽约的巴士呢? 只需要一个人,这是正确答案。 所以,你需要做的 只是把你的轮椅——
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Sidle in the right place right in front of the steps and give it a little push underneath, and then their bus can't move.
滑到恰好挡住车前进的位置, 轻轻一推固定住, 巴士便不敢乱动了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Any of you who want to learn how to do that, talk to me after this.
谁要是想知道这些技巧, 等会儿可以到台下找我。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
In 1972, President Nixon vetoed the Rehabilitation Act. We protested. He signed it. Then the regulations that needed to be promulgated to implement that law had not in fact been signed. We demonstrated. They were signed. And when the Americans With Disabilities Act, the ADA, our Emancipation Proclamation Act, looked as though it might not in fact be passed in the House or Senate, disabled people from all across the United States came together and they crawled up the Capitol steps. That was an amazing day, and the House and Senate passed the ADA. And then President Bush signed the ADA. It's a great picture. President Bush signed the ADA on the lawn of the White House. It was an amazing day, and there are about 2,000 people there. It was July 26, 1990. And one of the most famous statements he had in his speech was, "Let the shameful walls of exclusion finally come tumbling down."
在1972年,尼克松总统 否决了残疾人劳工复健法案。 我们抗议了,他随后便签署了。 不过当时为落实 该法律相关必要的规章 其实并没有被签署。 我们再次游行示威,他们再次签署了。 后来,美国残疾人法案, 也就是ADA, 如同我们残疾人的解放宣言, 看起来好像并没有 在众议院或参议院通过, 全美的残障人士都汇聚起来了, 他们爬上国会大厦的台阶。 那真的是非凡的一天, 随后众议院和参议院通过了ADA。 当时的总统老布什 也签署通过了ADA。 这真是一张难忘的照片。 布什总统在白宫的 草坪上签署了ADA。 这是无比伦比的一天, 当时有大概两千多人守候在那里, 那是1990年7月26日。 他在当天的演讲中 说过的最著名的一句话是: “让可耻的排斥之墙最终崩塌。”
For any of you in the room who are 50 or older, or maybe or even 40 or older, you remember a time when there were no ramps on the streets, when buses were not accessible, when trains were not accessible, where there were no wheelchair-accessible bathrooms in shopping malls, where you certainly did not have a sign language interpreter, or captioning, or braille or other kinds of supports. These things have changed, and they have inspired the world. And disabled people around the world want laws like we have, and they want those laws enforced.
在座的各位, 如果您在五十岁, 或许四十岁以上, 你应该能回想起来,以前的 街道上是没有无障碍坡道的, 以前的巴士是 没有无障碍设施的, 以前的地铁也是 没有无障碍设施的, 以前的商场里是 没有残疾人厕所的, 当然,那时也没有人 提供手语翻译, 影音字幕,盲文,种种对 残疾人的支持当时都没有。 现如今,这一切都改变了, 而且这些改变影响了整个世界。 全世界的残障人士都 希望拥有我们一样的法律, 他们希望这些 法律能被强制执行。
And so what we've seen is something called the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It is a treaty that was adopted in 2006. It's celebrating is 10-year anniversary. More than 165 countries have joined this treaty. It is the first international human rights treaty fully focused on disabled people. But I am sad to say that our US Senate has failed to recommend to our president that we ratify the treaty. We signed it in 2009, but it doesn't come into force until ratification, and the president -- no president can ratify a treaty without the consent of the Senate. So we feel really strongly that our US Senate needs to do its job, that our Senate needs to enable us as Americans not only to be able to assist disabled people and governments around the world to learn about the good work that we've been doing, but it's equally important that disabled people have the same opportunities to travel, study and work abroad as anyone else in our country. And as long as many countries don't have the same laws as we do and don't enforce them if they have them, opportunities for disabled people are more limited.
所以我们进而拥有了 《残疾人权利公约》。 这是一项于2006年通过的公约。 正在庆祝它的10周年。 超过165个国家加入了这项公约。 这是第一个国际性的, 专为残疾人而打造的 人权公约。 但很遗憾,我们的美国参议院 没有及时向我们的总统 建议批准该公约。 我们2009年就在国际上签署了, 但(公约)不能被实际实施, 除非我们在国内正式批准, 就算是总统, 在没有参议院的批准下, 也不能正式将公约批准实施。 所以我们深深感到 我们的参议院应该做好份内工作, 让我们美国人有能力 不仅仅去帮助残障人士, 帮助世界上的其他政府 了解和学习我们签署的法案, 而且同样重要的是 残障人士能有和 国内的其他普通人一样 拥有出国旅游、留学和 在海外工作的机会。 只要世界上还有很多国家没有 像我们一样保护残疾人的法律, 或者他们有法律却不被强制执行, 残障人士的机会就依然有限。
When I travel abroad, I am always meeting with disabled women, and those women tell me stories about how they experience violence and rape and how in many cases these forms of violence occur from family members and people that they know, who in fact may be working for them. And frequently these cases are not adjudicated. I meet disabled people who have been offered jobs by businesses because they live in a country where there's a quota system, and in order to avoid a fine, they will hire you and then tell you, "You don't need to come to work because we really don't need you in the facility." I have visited institutions where the stench of urine is so strong that before you open the door of your vehicle, you're kind of pushed back, and then gone into those institutions where people should be living in the community with appropriate supports and seen people almost naked, people who are chemically drugged and people who are living lives of despair. These are some of the things that the US needs to be doing more to correct. We know discrimination when we see it, and we need to be fighting it together.
每当我有机会出国时, 我总是会去见见 身残志坚的女性们, 听听她们的故事, 听她们讲述她们如何 熬过暴力和强奸, 而且为什么这些各种形式的暴力 往往由家庭成员或者 她们所熟知的人实施, 甚至可能是她们的下属。 然而经常性的, 这些事件并没有被立案。 我遇到有过残障人士 得到了一份工作, 仅仅因为他们所居住的 国家有一个配额要求, 公司为了避免被罚款, 才雇佣了残障人士, 然后他们告诉你, “你不用来上班, 因为我们这边真的不需要你“。 我去过的一些(美国的福利)机构, 建筑内的骚臭味强烈到 你还没有推开车门, 就有点被熏倒的感觉, 在这种公共机构里, 本应该是给予人们 支持和帮助的社区, 里面的人们大都衣不遮体, 还有正在嗑药的人, 还有很多生活在绝望中的人们。 这些都是本不应该发生的事情, 美国需要采取更多措施解决这些问题。 我们都看得出什么是歧视, 我们需要一起为此斗争下去。
So what is it that we can be doing together? I encourage you all to recognize that disability is a family you can join at any point in your life. I'd like to see by a show of hands how many of you have ever broken a bone? And then, when you leave today, I'd like you to maybe write a couple of sentences about what that period of time has been like for you, because frequently I hear from people, "You know, I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that. People talked to me differently. They acted differently towards me." And that's what I see and other disabled people see in flashing letters.
那么,什么能够让我们团结起来? 我希望你们认识到, 任何人,在人生的任何时刻, 都有可能变成残障人群中的一员。 有多少人曾经经历过骨折的, 能举手给我看一下吗? 好,今天结束之后, 我想让你们就用几句话 描述一下那段时间 你的生活是怎样的, 因为我经常听到人们说, “我不能做这个了, 我不能做那个了, 大家跟我说话的方式变了, 大家对我的行为也都变了。” 这些问题,让我和其他残障人士 都印象深刻。
But we -- you in this room, people listening and watching this TED Talk -- together we can make a difference. Together we can speak up for justice. Together we can help change the world.
但我们,在座的你们, 在聆听和观看这场 TED 演讲的人们—— 我们携起手来,就能做出改变, 我们团结一致,就能伸张正义, 我们风雨同舟,就能改变世界!
Thank you. I have to go catch my bus.
谢谢你们,我得去赶巴士了。
(Applause)
(掌声)