My President Was Black

A history of the first African American White House—and of what came next

第一个非裔美国人白宫的历史以及接下来发生的事情

Ian Allen Story by Ta-Nehisi Coates January/February 2017 Issue “They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn.

伊恩·艾伦 (Ian Allen) 的故事，塔-内西斯·科茨 (Ta-Nehisi Coates) 2017 年 1 月/2 月号 “他们是一群腐烂的人，”我隔着草坪喊道。

“You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”

“你值得所有该死的人加在一起。”

In the waning days of President Barack Obama’s administration, he and his wife, Michelle, hosted a farewell party, the full import of which no one could then grasp.

在巴拉克·奥巴马总统执政的最后时期，他和他的妻子米歇尔举办了一场告别派对，当时没有人能够理解其全部意义。

It was late October, Friday the 21st, and the president had spent many of the previous weeks, as he would spend the two subsequent weeks, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.

那是 10 月底，即 21 日星期五，总统在前几周的大部分时间里以及接下来的两周里都在为民主党总统候选人希拉里·克林顿竞选。

Things were looking up.

事情正在好转。

Polls in the crucial states of Virginia and Pennsylvania showed Clinton with solid advantages.

弗吉尼亚州和宾夕法尼亚州等关键州的民意调查显示克林顿拥有坚实的优势。

The formidable GOP strongholds of Georgia and Texas were said to be under threat.

据说，共和党在佐治亚州和德克萨斯州的强大据点正受到威胁。

The moment seemed to buoy Obama.

这一刻似乎让奥巴马感到振奋。

He had been light on his feet in these last few weeks, cracking jokes at the expense of Republican opponents and laughing off hecklers.

在过去的几周里，他表现得很轻松，经常拿共和党对手开玩笑，并对质问者一笑置之。

At a rally in Orlando on October 28, he greeted a student who would be introducing him by dancing toward her and then noting that the song playing over the loudspeakers—the Gap Band’s “Outstanding”—was older than she was.

10 月 28 日，在奥兰多的一次集会上，他向一位学生打招呼，这名学生向她跳舞，向她介绍他，然后注意到扩音器中播放的歌曲——Gap 乐队的《杰出》——比她年龄大。

“This is classic!” he said.

“这很经典！”他说。

Then he flashed the smile that had launched America’s first black presidency, and started dancing again.

然后他露出了美国第一位黑人总统诞生时的微笑，然后又开始跳舞。

Three months still remained before Inauguration Day, but staffers had already begun to count down the days.

距离就职日还有三个月，但工作人员已经开始倒计时。

They did this with a mix of pride and longing—like college seniors in early May.

他们怀着自豪和渴望的心情完成了这件事——就像五月初的大学毕业生一样。

They had no sense of the world they were graduating into.

他们对即将毕业的世界没有任何感觉。

None of us did.

我们谁也没有这么做。

The farewell party, presented by BET (Black Entertainment Television), was the last in a series of concerts the first couple had hosted at the White House.

BET（黑人娱乐电视台）主办的告别派对是第一对夫妇在白宫举办的一系列音乐会中的最后一场。

Guests were asked to arrive at 5:30 p.m.

客人被要求在下午 5:30 到达。

By 6, two long lines stretched behind the Treasury Building, where the Secret Service was checking names.

到了六点，财政部大楼后面已经排起了两条长队，特勤局正在那里核对姓名。

The people in these lines were, in the main, black, and their humor reflected it.

这些人主要是黑人，他们的幽默反映了这一点。

The brisker queue was dubbed the “good-hair line” by one guest, and there was laughter at the prospect of the Secret Service subjecting us all to a “brown-paper-bag test.” This did not come to pass, but security was tight.

一位客人将这条整齐的队伍称为“好发线”，而特勤局对我们所有人进行“棕色纸袋测试”的前景引发了一阵笑声。这并没有实现，但安全措施很严密。

Several guests were told to stand in a makeshift pen and wait to have their backgrounds checked a second time.

几名客人被告知站在临时围栏里，等待第二次背景检查。

Listen to the audio version of this article: Download the Audm app for your iPhone to listen to more titles.

收听本文的音频版本：下载适用于您 iPhone 的 Audm 应用程序以收听更多歌曲。

Dave Chappelle was there.

戴夫·查普尔也在场。

He coolly explained the peril and promise of comedy in what was then still only a remotely potential Donald Trump presidency: “I mean, we never had a guy have his own pussygate scandal.” Everyone laughed.

他冷静地解释了在唐纳德·特朗普总统任期内，喜剧的危险和前景：“我的意思是，我们从来没有一个人有过自己的阴门丑闻。”大家都笑了。

A few weeks later, he would be roundly criticized for telling a crowd at the Cutting Room, in New York, that he had voted for Clinton but did not feel good about it.

几周后，他因在纽约剪辑室告诉人群他投票给了克林顿但感觉不太好而受到严厉批评。

“She’s going to be on a coin someday,” Chappelle said.

“有一天她会出现在硬币上，”查佩尔说。

“And her behavior has not been coinworthy.” But on this crisp October night, everything felt inevitable and grand.

“而她的行为并不值得赚钱。”但在这个清爽的十月夜晚，一切都显得不可避免且宏伟。

There was a slight wind.

有微风。

It had been in the 80s for much of that week.

那一周的大部分时间都处于 80 年代。

Now, as the sun set, the season remembered its name.

现在，随着太阳落山，这个季节记住了它的名字。

Women shivered in their cocktail dresses.

穿着燕尾服的女人们瑟瑟发抖。

Gentlemen chivalrously handed over their suit coats.

绅士们侠义地交出了西装外套。

But when Naomi Campbell strolled past the security pen in a sleeveless number, she seemed as invulnerable as ever.

但当娜奥米·坎贝尔穿着无袖衣服走过安全围栏时，她看起来一如既往的无懈可击。

Cellphones were confiscated to prevent surreptitious recordings from leaking out.

手机被没收，以防止秘密录音泄露。

(This effort was unsuccessful.

（这个努力没有成功。

The next day, a partygoer would tweet a video of the leader of the free world dancing to Drake’s “Hotline Bling.”) After withstanding the barrage of security, guests were welcomed into the East Wing of the White House, and then ushered back out into the night, where they boarded a succession of orange-and-green trolleys.

第二天，一位参加聚会的人会在推特上发布一段自由世界领导人随着德雷克的《Hotline Bling》跳舞的视频。）在顶住保安的重重包围后，客人们被欢迎进入白宫东翼，然后被带回到夜色中，在那里他们登上了一连串橙色和绿色的手推车。

The singer and actress Janelle Monáe, her famous and fantastic pompadour preceding her, stepped on board and joked with a companion about the historical import of “sitting in the back of the bus.” She took a seat three rows from the front and hummed into the night.

歌手兼演员加奈尔·梦奈 (Janelle Monáe) 登上了车，并与同伴开玩笑说“坐在公共汽车后座”的历史意义。她在距离前三排的位置坐下，哼着歌走进夜色。

The trolley dropped the guests on the South Lawn, in front of a giant tent.

电车把客人们送到了南草坪的一个巨大帐篷前。

The South Lawn’s fountain was lit up with blue lights.

南草坪的喷泉亮起了蓝色的灯光。

The White House proper loomed like a ghost in the distance.

白宫像幽灵一样隐约出现在远处。

I heard the band, inside, beginning to play Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”

我听到里面的乐队开始演奏艾尔·格林的《Let’s Stay Together》。

“Well, you can tell what type of night this is,” Obama said from the stage, opening the event.

“好吧，你可以看出这是一个什么样的夜晚，”奥巴马在舞台上说道，为活动拉开序幕。

“Not the usual ruffles and flourishes!”

“不是通常的荷叶边和华丽！”

Obama placed the concert in the White House’s musical tradition, noting that guests of the Kennedys had once done the twist at the residence—“the twerking of their time,” he said, before adding, “There will be no twerking tonight.

奥巴马将这场音乐会置于白宫的音乐传统之中，并指出肯尼迪家族的客人曾经在官邸进行过扭臀表演——“他们那个时代的电臀舞，”他说，然后补充道，“今晚不会有电臀舞。

At least not by me.”

至少不是我干的。”

The Obamas are fervent and eclectic music fans.

奥巴马夫妇是狂热且不拘一格的音乐迷。

In the past eight years, they have hosted performances at the White House by everyone from Mavis Staples to Bob Dylan to Tony Bennett to the Blind Boys of Alabama.

在过去的八年里，他们在白宫举办了包括梅维斯·斯台普斯（Mavis Staples）、鲍勃·迪伦（Bob Dylan）、托尼·贝内特（Tony Bennett）和阿拉巴马盲人男孩（Blind Boys of Alabama）在内的所有人的表演。

After the rapper Common was invited to perform in 2011, a small fracas ensued in the right-wing media.

2011年，说唱歌手Common受邀演出后，右翼媒体引发了一场小争吵。

He performed anyway—and was invited back again this glorious fall evening and almost stole the show.

不管怎样，他还是表演了——并在这个辉煌的秋夜再次被邀请回来，几乎抢尽了风头。

The crowd sang along to the hook for his hit ballad “The Light.” And when he brought on the gospel singer Yolanda Adams to fill in for John Legend on the Oscar-winning song “Glory,” glee turned to rapture.

人群随着他的热门民谣《The Light》的副歌一起唱。当他邀请福音歌手尤兰达·亚当斯 (Yolanda Adams) 来代替约翰·传奇 (John Legend) 演唱奥斯卡获奖歌曲《荣耀》时，欢乐变成了狂喜。

De La Soul was there.

德拉苏尔就在那里。

The hip-hop trio had come of age as boyish B-boys with Gumby-style high-top fades.

这对嘻哈三人组已经成长为孩子气的 B-boy，穿着 Gumby 风格的高帮褪色衣服。

Now they moved across the stage with a lovely mix of lethargy and grace, like your favorite uncle making his way down the Soul Train line, wary of throwing out a hip.

现在他们在舞台上移动，带着一种可爱的慵懒和优雅的混合体，就像你最喜欢的叔叔沿着灵魂列车线走来，小心翼翼地避免摔倒。

I felt a sense of victory watching them rock the crowd, all while keeping it in the pocket.

看着他们震撼人群，我感到一种胜利的感觉，同时把钱装在口袋里。

The victory belonged to hip-hop—an art form birthed in the burning Bronx and now standing full grown, at the White House, unbroken and unedited.

这场胜利属于嘻哈音乐——一种诞生于燃烧的布朗克斯的艺术形式，如今在白宫里成熟起来，未被破坏和未经编辑。

Usher led the crowd in a call-and-response: “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud.” Jill Scott showed off her operatic chops.

亚瑟带领人群进行了呼喊和回应：“大声说出来，我是黑人，我很自豪。”吉尔·斯科特展示了她的歌剧才华。

Bell Biv DeVoe, contemporaries of De La, made history with their performance by surely becoming the first group to suggest to a presidential audience that one should “never trust a big butt and a smile.”

与德拉同时代的贝尔·比夫·德沃（Bell Biv DeVoe）以他们的表演创造了历史，他们无疑成为第一个向总统观众建议人们“永远不要相信大屁股和微笑”的团体。

President Obama onstage at BET’s “Love & Happiness” event in October 2016, the last in a series of concerts the first couple hosted at the White House (Lawrence Jackson / White House) The ties between the Obama White House and the hip-hop community are genuine.

2016 年 10 月，奥巴马总统在 BET 的“Love & Happiness”活动上登台，这是第一对夫妇在白宫举办的一系列音乐会中的最后一场（劳伦斯·杰克逊/白宫）奥巴马白宫与嘻哈界之间的联系是真诚的。

The Obamas are social with Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

奥巴马夫妇与碧昂丝和 Jay-Z 交往频繁。

They hosted Chance the Rapper and Frank Ocean at a state dinner, and last year invited Swizz Beatz, Busta Rhymes, and Ludacris, among others, to discuss criminal-justice reform and other initiatives.

他们在国宴上招待了说唱歌手钱斯和弗兰克·奥恩，去年还邀请了斯威兹·贝茨、布斯塔·莱姆斯和卢达克里斯等人讨论刑事司法改革和其他举措。

Obama once stood in the Rose Garden passing large flash cards to the Hamilton creator and rapper Lin-Manuel Miranda, who then freestyled using each word on the cards.

奥巴马有一次站在玫瑰园，将大型闪存卡递给《汉密尔顿》的创作者兼说唱歌手林-曼努尔·米兰达，然后后者即兴使用卡片上的每个单词。

“Drop the beat,” Obama said, inaugurating the session.

“停止节奏，”奥巴马在会议开幕时说道。

At 55, Obama is younger than pioneering hip-hop artists like Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc, and Kurtis Blow.

奥巴马现年 55 岁，比 Afrika Bambaataa、DJ Kool Herc 和 Kurtis Blow 等嘻哈先锋艺术家还要年轻。

If Obama’s enormous symbolic power draws primarily from being the country’s first black president, it also draws from his membership in hip-hop’s foundational generation.

如果说奥巴马巨大的象征力量主要来自于他作为美国第一位黑人总统的身份，那么它也来自于他作为嘻哈音乐奠基一代的身份。

That night, the men were sharp in their gray or black suits and optional ties.

那天晚上，男人们穿着灰色或黑色的西装，打着随意的领带，显得很帅气。

Those who were not in suits had chosen to make a statement, like the dark-skinned young man who strolled in, sockless, with blue jeans cuffed so as to accentuate his gorgeous black-suede loafers.

那些不穿西装的人选择发表声明，就像那个黑皮肤的年轻人走进来，光着袜子，蓝色牛仔裤翻边，以凸显他那双华丽的黑色麂皮乐福鞋。

Everything in his ensemble seemed to say, “My fellow Americans, do not try this at home.” There were women in fur jackets and high heels; others with sculpted naturals, the sides shaved close, the tops blooming into curls; others still in gold bamboo earrings and long blond dreads.

他的乐队中的一切似乎都在说：“我的美国同胞们，不要在家里尝试这个。”其中有穿着毛皮夹克和高跟鞋的女人；另一些则具有雕刻般的自然造型，两侧剃得很整齐，顶部呈卷发状。其他人仍然戴着金竹耳环和长长的金发辫子。

When the actor Jesse Williams took the stage, seemingly awed before such black excellence, before such black opulence, assembled just feet from where slaves had once toiled, he simply said, “Look where we are.

当演员杰西·威廉姆斯走上舞台时，他似乎对这样的黑人卓越、如此黑人的富裕感到敬畏，聚集在距离奴隶曾经辛苦劳作的地方仅几英尺的地方，他只是说：“看看我们在哪里。

Look where we are right now.”

看看我们现在在哪里。”

This would not happen again, and everyone knew it.

这种事不会再发生了，每个人都知道。

It was not just that there might never be another African American president of the United States.

这不仅仅是因为美国可能永远不会出现另一位非裔美国总统。

It was the feeling that this particular black family, the Obamas, represented the best of black people, the ultimate credit to the race, incomparable in elegance and bearing.

人们感觉奥巴马一家这个特殊的黑人家庭代表了黑人中最优秀的人，是种族的最高荣誉，在优雅和风度上无与伦比。

“There are no more,” the comedian Sinbad joked back in 2010.

“已经没有了，”喜剧演员辛巴达在 2010 年开玩笑说。

“There are no black men raised in Kansas and Hawaii.

“堪萨斯和夏威夷没有长大的黑人。

That’s the last one.

这是最后一张。

Y’all better treat this one right.

你们最好正确对待这个。

The next one gonna be from Cleveland.

下一位将来自克利夫兰。

He gonna wear a perm.

他要烫发。

Then you gonna see what it’s really like.” Throughout their residency, the Obamas had refrained from showing America “what it’s really like,” and had instead followed the first lady’s motto, “When they go low, we go high.” This was the ideal—black and graceful under fire—saluted that evening.

然后你就会看到它到底是什么样的。”在整个驻地期间，奥巴马夫妇一直没有向美国展示“它的真实面貌”，而是遵循第一夫人的座右铭：“当他们走低时，我们走高。”这就是那天晚上向人们致敬的理想——在炮火中黑色而优雅。

The president was lionized as “our crown jewel.” The first lady was praised as the woman “who put the O in Obama .”

总统被尊崇为“我们皇冠上的明珠”。第一夫人被誉为“为奥巴马打上O”的女人。

Barack Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans.

巴拉克·奥巴马 (Barack Obama) 2008 年和 2012 年的胜利被他的一些批评者斥为仅仅是非裔美国人的象征。

But there is nothing “mere” about symbols.

但符号绝不是“纯粹”的。

The power embedded in the word nigger is also symbolic.

黑鬼这个词所蕴含的力量也是象征性的。

Burning crosses do not literally raise the black poverty rate, and the Confederate flag does not directly expand the wealth gap.

焚烧十字架并不会真正提高黑人贫困率，而南方邦联旗帜也不会直接扩大贫富差距。

Much as the unbroken ranks of 43 white male presidents communicated that the highest office of government in the country—indeed, the most powerful political offices in the world—was off-limits to black individuals, the election of Barack Obama communicated that the prohibition had been lifted.

正如 43 名白人男性总统组成的不间断的队伍传达出该国政府最高职位——实际上是世界上最有权势的政治职位——禁止黑人担任一样，巴拉克·奥巴马的当选传达出这一禁令已被解除。

It communicated much more.

它传达了更多信息。

Before Obama triumphed in 2008, the most-famous depictions of black success tended to be entertainers or athletes.

在 2008 年奥巴马获胜之前，最著名的黑人成功描述往往是艺人或运动员。

But Obama had shown that it was “possible to be smart and cool at the same damn time,” as Jesse Williams put it at the BET party.

但奥巴马已经表明，正如杰西·威廉姆斯在 BET 派对上所说的那样，“在该死的同时变得聪明和冷静是可能的”。

Moreover, he had not embarrassed his people with a string of scandals.

而且，他并没有因为一连串的丑闻而让他的人民难堪。

Against the specter of black pathology, against the narrow images of welfare moms and deadbeat dads, his time in the White House had been an eight-year showcase of a healthy and successful black family spanning three generations, with two dogs to boot.

反对黑人病态的幽灵，反对福利母亲和游手好闲的父亲的狭隘形象，他在白宫的八年时间展示了一个健康、成功的黑人家庭，跨越了三代人，还有两只狗。

In short, he became a symbol of black people’s everyday, extraordinary Americanness.

简而言之，他成为黑人日常生活中非凡的美国精神的象征。

Whiteness in America is a different symbol—a badge of advantage.

在美国，白人是一个不同的象征——优势的徽章。

In a country of professed meritocratic competition, this badge has long ensured an unerring privilege, represented in a 220-year monopoly on the highest office in the land.

在一个公开宣称的精英竞争的国家，这一徽章长期以来一直确保着绝对的特权，代表着对该国最高职位长达 220 年的垄断。

For some not-insubstantial sector of the country, the elevation of Barack Obama communicated that the power of the badge had diminished.

对于这个国家的一些重要部门来说，巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)的晋升表明徽章的力量已经减弱。

For eight long years, the badge-holders watched him.

长达八年的时间里，徽章持有者一直注视着他。

They saw footage of the president throwing bounce passes and shooting jumpers.

他们看到了总统投掷弹跳传球和跳投的镜头。

They saw him enter a locker room, give a businesslike handshake to a white staffer, and then greet Kevin Durant with something more soulful.

他们看到他进入更衣室，与一名白人工作人员进行了公事公办的握手，然后用更深情的方式向凯文·杜兰特打招呼。

They saw his wife dancing with Jimmy Fallon and posing, resplendent, on the covers of magazines that had, only a decade earlier, been almost exclusively, if unofficially, reserved for ladies imbued with the great power of the badge.

他们看到他的妻子与吉米·法伦一起跳舞，并在杂志封面上摆出华丽的姿势，就在十年前，这些杂志几乎完全（如果非官方）专门为那些充满徽章强大力量的女士保留。

For the preservation of the badge, insidious rumors were concocted to denigrate the first black White House.

为了保存徽章，炮制了阴险的谣言来诋毁第一任黑人白宫。

Obama gave free cellphones to disheveled welfare recipients.

奥巴马向衣冠不整的福利领取者免费提供手机。

Obama went to Europe and complained that “ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs.” Obama had inscribed an Arabic saying on his wedding ring, then stopped wearing the ring, in observance of Ramadan.

奥巴马前往欧洲抱怨“普通男女心胸狭隘，无法管理自己的事务”。奥巴马在他的结婚戒指上刻了一句阿拉伯谚语，然后为了纪念斋月而不再佩戴这枚戒指。

He canceled the National Day of Prayer; refused to sign certificates for Eagle Scouts; faked his attendance at Columbia University; and used a teleprompter to address a group of elementary-school students.

他取消了全国祈祷日；拒绝签署鹰级童子军证书；伪造自己就读于哥伦比亚大学；并使用提词器向一群小学生讲话。

The badge-holders fumed.

徽章持有者愤怒了。

They wanted their country back.

他们想要回自己的国家。

And, though no one at the farewell party knew it, in a couple of weeks they would have it.

而且，尽管告别派对上没有人知道这一点，但几周后他们就会得到它。

On this October night, though, the stage belonged to another America.

然而，在这个十月的夜晚，舞台属于另一个美国。

At the end of the party, Obama looked out into the crowd, searching for Dave Chappelle.

聚会结束时，奥巴马向人群中望去，寻找戴夫·查佩尔。

“Where’s Dave?” he cried.

“戴夫在哪儿？”他哭了。

And then, finding him, the president referenced Chappelle’s legendary Brooklyn concert.

然后，总统找到了他，提到了查佩尔传奇的布鲁克林音乐会。

“You got your block party.

“你举办了街区派对。

I got my block party.” Then the band struck up Al Green’s “Love and Happiness”—the evening’s theme.

我举办了街区派对。”然后乐队演奏了艾尔·格林的《爱与幸福》——当晚的主题。

The president danced in a line next to Ronnie DeVoe.

总统在罗尼·德沃旁边排成一排跳舞。

Together they mouthed the lyrics: “Make you do right.

他们一起念出歌词：“让你做对的事。

Love will make you do wrong.”

爱情会让你做错事。”

Last spring , I went to the White House to meet the president for lunch.

去年春天，我去白宫与总统共进午餐。

I arrived slightly early and sat in the waiting area.

我到的有点早，坐在等候区。

I was introduced to a deaf woman who worked as the president’s receptionist, a black woman who worked in the press office, a Muslim woman in a head scarf who worked on the National Security Council, and an Iranian American woman who worked as a personal aide to the president.

有人向我介绍了一位担任总统接待员的聋哑妇女、一位在新闻办公室工作的黑人妇女、一位在国家安全委员会工作的戴头巾的穆斯林妇女，以及一位担任总统私人助理的伊朗裔美国妇女。

This receiving party represented a healthy cross section of the people Donald Trump had been mocking, and would continue to spend his campaign mocking.

这个接收方代表了唐纳德·特朗普一直嘲笑的人群中的健康群体，并将继续在他的竞选活动中嘲笑。

At the time, the president seemed untroubled by Trump.

当时，总统似乎并没有受到特朗普的困扰。

When I told Obama that I thought Trump’s candidacy was an explicit reaction to the fact of a black president, he said he could see that, but then enumerated other explanations.

当我告诉奥巴马我认为特朗普的候选资格是对黑人总统这一事实的明确反应时，他说他可以看到这一点，但随后列举了其他解释。

When assessing Trump’s chances, he was direct: He couldn’t win.

在评估特朗普的机会时，他很直接：他不可能获胜。

This assessment was born out of the president’s innate optimism and unwavering faith in the ultimate wisdom of the American people—the same traits that had propelled his unlikely five-year ascent from assemblyman in the Illinois state legislature to U.S. senator to leader of the free world.

这一评估源于总统与生俱来的乐观态度和对美国人民终极智慧坚定不移的信念——正是这些特质促使他在五年之内从伊利诺伊州立法机构议员晋升为美国参议员，再成为自由世界的领导人。

The speech that launched his rise, the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, emerged right from this logic.

2004 年民主党全国代表大会上发表的推动他崛起的演讲，就是从这种逻辑中诞生的。

He addressed himself to his “fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, independents,” all of whom, he insisted, were more united than they had been led to believe.

他向“美国同胞们、民主党人、共和党人、无党派人士”致辞，他坚称，所有这些人比他们想象的更加团结。

America was home to devout worshippers and Little League coaches in blue states, civil libertarians and “gay friends” in red states.

美国是蓝色州的虔诚崇拜者和少年棒球联盟教练、红色州的公民自由主义者和“同性恋朋友”的家园。

The presumably white “counties around Chicago” did not want their taxes burned on welfare, but they didn’t want them wasted on a bloated Pentagon budget either.

大概是白人“芝加哥周边的县”不希望他们的税收被烧在福利上，但他们也不希望它们浪费在臃肿的五角大楼预算上。

Inner-city black families, no matter their perils, understood “that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn …

内城区的黑人家庭，无论面临何种危险，都明白“仅靠政府无法教我们的孩子学习......

that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.”

除非我们提高孩子们的期望，关掉电视机，根除“拿着一本书的黑人青年表现得像白人”的诽谤，否则孩子们就无法实现这一目标。”

Perceived differences were the work of “spinmasters and negative-ad peddlers who embrace the politics of ‘anything goes.’ ” Real America had no use for such categorizations.

感知到的差异是“信奉‘一切皆有可能’政治的政治大师和负面广告贩子的作品。”真正的美国没有必要进行这样的分类。

By Obama’s lights, there was no liberal America, no conservative America, no black America, no white America, no Latino America, no Asian America, only “the United States of America.” All these disparate strands of the American experience were bound together by a common hope:

在奥巴马看来，没有自由派美国，没有保守派美国，没有黑人美国，没有白人美国，没有拉丁美洲人，没有亚裔美国，只有“美利坚合众国”。所有这些不同的美国经历都被一个共同的希望联系在一起：

This speech ran counter to the history of the people it sought to address.

这篇演讲与其所针对的人们的历史背道而驰。

Some of those same immigrants had firebombed the homes of the children of those same slaves.

其中一些移民还对这些奴隶的孩子的房屋进行了燃烧弹袭击。

That young naval lieutenant was an imperial agent for a failed, immoral war.

那位年轻的海军中尉是一场失败的、不道德的战争的帝国代理人。

American division was real.

美国的分裂是真实存在的。

In 2004, John Kerry did not win a single southern state.

2004年，约翰·克里没有赢得南方任何一个州。

But Obama appealed to a belief in innocence—in particular a white innocence—that ascribed the country’s historical errors more to misunderstanding and the work of a small cabal than to any deliberate malevolence or widespread racism.

但奥巴马诉诸于一种对清白的信念——尤其是白人的清白——这种信念更多地将国家的历史错误归咎于误解和一小撮阴谋集团的行为，而不是任何蓄意的恶意或普遍的种族主义。

America was good.

美国本来就很好。

America was great.

美国很棒。

Over the next 12 years, I came to regard Obama as a skilled politician, a deeply moral human being, and one of the greatest presidents in American history.

在接下来的12年里，我逐渐将奥巴马视为一位技巧娴熟的政治家、一位道德高尚的人，以及美国历史上最伟大的总统之一。

He was phenomenal—the most agile interpreter and navigator of the color line I had ever seen.

他是非凡的——是我所见过的最敏捷的肤色界线解释者和导航者。

He had an ability to emote a deep and sincere connection to the hearts of black people, while never doubting the hearts of white people.

他有能力与黑人的心灵建立深厚而真诚的联系，同时从不怀疑白人的心灵。

This was the core of his 2004 keynote, and it marked his historic race speech during the 2008 campaign at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center—and blinded him to the appeal of Trump.

这是他 2004 年主题演讲的核心，也是他 2008 年竞选期间在费城国家宪法中心发表的历史性种族演讲，也让他对特朗普的吸引力视而不见。

(“As a general proposition, it’s hard to run for president by telling people how terrible things are,” Obama once said to me.)

（“总的来说，通过告诉人们事情有多么可怕来竞选总统是很难的，”奥巴马曾经对我说。）

But if the president’s inability to cement his legacy in the form of Hillary Clinton proved the limits of his optimism, it also revealed the exceptional nature of his presidential victories.

但如果总统无法以希拉里·克林顿(Hillary Clinton)的形式巩固自己的政治遗产，这证明了他的乐观主义的局限性，那么这也揭示了他的总统胜利的非凡性质。

For eight years Barack Obama walked on ice and never fell.

八年来，巴拉克·奥巴马在冰上行走，从未跌倒。

Nothing in that time suggested that straight talk on the facts of racism in American life would have given him surer footing.

当时没有任何迹象表明，直言不讳地谈论美国生活中的种族主义事实会给他带来更稳固的立足点。

Obama’s keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention launched his rise from Illinois state senator to president of the United States.

奥巴马在 2004 年民主党全国代表大会上的主旨演讲开启了他从伊利诺伊州参议员晋升为美国总统的旅程。

(David L.

（大卫·L.

Ryan / The Boston Globe / Getty) I had met the president a few times before.

瑞安/波士顿环球报/盖蒂）我之前曾见过总统几次。

In his second term, I’d written articles criticizing him for his overriding trust in color-blind policy and his embrace of “personal responsibility” rhetoric when speaking to African Americans.

在他的第二个任期内，我曾写过文章批评他对无肤色政策的过度信任以及在与非裔美国人交谈时拥护“个人责任”言论。

I saw him as playing both sides.

我看到他在两边打球。

He would invoke his identity as a president of all people to decline to advocate for black policy—and then invoke his black identity to lecture black people for continuing to “make bad choices.” In response, Obama had invited me, along with other journalists, to the White House for off-the-record conversations.

他会援引自己作为所有人总统的身份来拒绝倡导黑人政策，然后又援引自己的黑人身份来教训黑人继续“做出错误的选择”。作为回应，奥巴马邀请我和其他记者前往白宫进行非正式谈话。

I attempted to press my points in these sessions.

我试图在这些会议上强调我的观点。

My efforts were laughable and ineffective.

我的努力是可笑且无效的。

I was always inappropriately dressed, and inappropriately calibrated in tone: In one instance, I was too deferential; in another, too bellicose.

我总是穿着不合时宜，语气也不合时宜：有一次，我太恭敬了；有一次，我太恭敬了；有一次，我太恭敬了。另一方面，太好战了。

I was discombobulated by fear—not by fear of the power of his office (though that is a fearsome and impressive thing) but by fear of his obvious brilliance.

我因恐惧而感到困惑——不是因为害怕他办公室的权力（尽管这是一件可怕而令人印象深刻的事情），而是因为害怕他明显的才华。

It is said that Obama speaks “professorially,” a fact that understates the quickness and agility of his mind.

有人说奥巴马说话“专业”，这一事实低估了他思维的敏捷性和敏捷性。

These were not like press conferences—the president would speak in depth and with great familiarity about a range of subjects.

这些不像新闻发布会——总统会就一系列主题进行深入而熟悉的演讲。

Once, I watched him effortlessly reply to queries covering everything from electoral politics to the American economy to environmental policy.

有一次，我看到他毫不费力地回答了从选举政治到美国经济再到环境政策等各个方面的问题。

And then he turned to me.

然后他转向我。

I thought of George Foreman, who once booked an exhibition with multiple opponents in which he pounded five straight journeymen—and I suddenly had some idea of how it felt to be the last of them.

我想起了乔治·福尔曼，他曾经预订了一场与多个对手的表演赛，在比赛中他连续殴打了五名熟练工——我突然明白了成为最后一个对手的感觉。

Last spring, we had a light lunch.

去年春天，我们吃了一顿清淡的午餐。

We talked casually and candidly.

我们随意而坦诚地交谈着。

He talked about the brilliance of LeBron James and Stephen Curry—not as basketball talents but as grounded individuals.

他谈到了勒布朗·詹姆斯和斯蒂芬·库里的才华——不是作为篮球天才，而是作为脚踏实地的个人。

I asked him whether he was angry at his father, who had abandoned him at a young age to move back to Kenya, and whether that motivated any of his rhetoric.

我问他是否对他的父亲感到愤怒，他的父亲在他很小的时候就抛弃了他，搬回肯尼亚，这是否激发了他的任何言论。

He said it did not, and he credited the attitude of his mother and grandparents for this.

他说事实并非如此，他将这归功于他的母亲和祖父母的态度。

Then it was my turn to be autobiographical.

然后轮到我写自传了。

I told him that I had heard the kind of “straighten up” talk he had been giving to black youth, for instance in his 2013 Morehouse commencement address, all my life.

我告诉他，我一生都听过他对黑人青年说的那种“整顿”谈话，比如他在 2013 年莫尔豪斯毕业典礼上的演讲。

I told him that I thought it was not sensitive to the inner turmoil that can be obscured by the hardness kids often evince.

我告诉他，我认为它对内心的混乱不敏感，而内心的混乱可能被孩子们经常表现出的冷酷所掩盖。

I told him I thought this because I had once been one of those kids.

我告诉他我这么想是因为我曾经是那些孩子中的一员。

He seemed to concede this point, but I couldn’t tell whether it mattered to him.

他似乎承认了这一点，但我不知道这对他是否重要。

Nonetheless, he agreed to a series of more formal conversations on this and other topics.

尽管如此，他还是同意就这个话题和其他话题进行一系列更正式的对话。

The improbability of a black president had once been so strong that its most vivid representations were comedic.

黑人总统的不可能性曾经如此强烈，以至于其最生动的表现都是喜剧。

Witness Dave Chappelle’s profane Black Bush from the early 2000s (“This nigger very possibly has weapons of mass destruction!

戴夫·查佩尔 (Dave Chappelle) 2000 年代初的亵渎《黑布什》就是见证（“这个黑鬼很可能拥有大规模杀伤性武器！

I can’t sleep on that!”) or Richard Pryor’s black president in the 1970s promising black astronauts and black quarterbacks (“Ever since the Rams got rid of James Harris, my jaw’s been uptight!”).

我睡不着觉！”）或者 20 世纪 70 年代理查德·普赖尔（Richard Pryor）的黑人总统承诺培养黑人宇航员和黑人四分卫（“自从公羊队摆脱了詹姆斯·哈里斯（James Harris）之后，我的下巴就绷得紧紧的！”）。

In this model, so potent is the force of blackness that the presidency is forced to conform to it.

在这个模型中，黑人的力量是如此强大，以至于总统被迫服从它。

But once the notion advanced out of comedy and into reality, the opposite proved to be true.

但一旦这个想法走出喜剧并进入现实，事实证明事实恰恰相反。

Obama’s DNC speech is the key.

奥巴马在民主党全国委员会的演讲是关键。

It does not belong to the literature of “the struggle”; it belongs to the literature of prospective presidents—men (as it turns out) who speak not to gravity and reality, but to aspirations and dreams.

它不属于“斗争”文学，而是“斗争”文学。它属于未来总统的文学——事实证明，这些人不是谈论重力和现实，而是谈论愿望和梦想。

When Lincoln invoked the dream of a nation “conceived in liberty” and pledged to the ideal that “all men are created equal,” he erased the near-extermination of one people and the enslavement of another.

当林肯援引“自由孕育”的国家梦想并承诺“人人生而平等”的理想时，他消除了一个民族濒临灭绝和另一个民族遭受奴役的情况。

When Roosevelt told the country that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he invoked the dream of American omnipotence and boundless capability.

当罗斯福告诉全国“我们唯一需要恐惧的就是恐惧本身”时，他援引了美国无所不能和无限能力的梦想。

But black people, then living under a campaign of terror for more than half a century, had quite a bit to fear, and Roosevelt could not save them.

但半个多世纪以来一直生活在恐怖运动之下的黑人有很多恐惧，罗斯福无法拯救他们。

The dream Ronald Reagan invoked in 1984—that “it’s morning again in America”—meant nothing to the inner cities, besieged as they were by decades of redlining policies, not to mention crack and Saturday-night specials.

罗纳德·里根 (Ronald Reagan) 在 1984 年提出的梦想——“美国又到了早晨”——对于内城区来说毫无意义，因为它们被几十年来的红线政策所围困，更不用说毒品和周六晚上的特价了。

Likewise, Obama’s keynote address conflated the slave and the nation of immigrants who profited from him.

同样，奥巴马的主旨演讲将奴隶和从他身上获利的移民国家混为一谈。

To reinforce the majoritarian dream, the nightmare endured by the minority is erased.

为了强化多数人的梦想，少数人所忍受的噩梦被消除了。

That is the tradition to which the “skinny kid with a funny name” who would be president belonged.

这就是即将成为总统的“名字滑稽的瘦子”所属的传统。

It is also the only tradition in existence that could have possibly put a black person in the White House.

这也是唯一可以让黑人入主白宫的传统。

Obama’s embrace of white innocence was demonstrably necessary as a matter of political survival.

出于政治生存的考虑，奥巴马拥抱白人纯真显然是必要的。

Whenever he attempted to buck this directive, he was disciplined.

每当他试图违背这一指令时，他就会受到纪律处分。

His mild objection to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2009 contributed to his declining favorability numbers among whites—still a majority of voters.

2009 年，他对小亨利·路易斯·盖茨 (Henry Louis Gates Jr.) 被捕的温和反对导致他在白人（仍占选民多数）中的好感度下降。

His comments after the killing of Trayvon Martin—“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”—helped make that tragedy a rallying point for people who did not care about Martin’s killer as much as they cared about finding ways to oppose the president.

他在特雷冯·马丁被杀后发表的评论——“如果我有一个儿子，他就会像特雷冯·马丁”——帮助这场悲剧成为了那些并不关心杀害马丁的凶手、而是关心如何反对总统的人们的聚集点。

Michael Tesler, a political-science professor at UC Irvine, has studied the effect of Obama’s race on the American electorate.

加州大学欧文分校政治学教授迈克尔·特斯勒研究了奥巴马的竞选对美国选民的影响。

“No other factor, in fact, came close to dividing the Democratic primary electorate as powerfully as their feelings about African Americans,” he and his co-author, David O.

他和他的合著者戴维·O·沃克 (David O.

Sears, concluded in their book, Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America .

西尔斯在他们的书《奥巴马的种族：2008 年大选和后种族美国的梦想》中总结道。

“The impact of racial attitudes on individual vote decisions …

“种族态度对个人投票决定的影响......

was so strong that it appears to have even outstripped the substantive impact of racial attitudes on Jesse Jackson’s more racially charged campaign for the nomination in 1988.” When Tesler looked at the 2012 campaign in his second book, Post-Racial or Most-Racial?

如此强烈，似乎甚至超过了种族态度对杰西·杰克逊 1988 年更具种族色彩的提名竞选活动的实质性影响。”当特斯勒在他的第二本书《后种族还是大多数种族？》中回顾 2012 年的竞选活动时，

Race and Politics in the Obama Era , very little had improved.

奥巴马时代的种族和政治几乎没有改善。

Analyzing the extent to which racial attitudes affected people associated with Obama during the 2012 election, Tesler concluded that “racial attitudes spilled over from Barack Obama into mass assessments of Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Charlie Crist, and even the Obama family’s dog Bo.”

特斯勒在分析 2012 年大选期间种族态度对与奥巴马有关的人的影响程度时得出结论，“种族态度从巴拉克·奥巴马蔓延到了对米特·罗姆尼、乔·拜登、希拉里·克林顿、查理·克里斯特，甚至奥巴马家族的狗博的大规模评估中。”

This photograph of a 5-year-old boy patting the president’s hair in 2009 became an icon of the Obama White House.

2009 年，一张 5 岁男孩抚摸总统头发的照片成为奥巴马政府的标志。

(Pete Souza / White House) Yet despite this entrenched racial resentment, and in the face of complete resistance by congressional Republicans, overtly launched from the moment Obama arrived in the White House, the president accomplished major feats.

（皮特·苏扎 / 白宫）然而，尽管存在这种根深蒂固的种族怨恨，并且面对国会共和党人从奥巴马入主白宫那一刻起就公开发起的全面抵制，总统还是取得了重大成就。

He remade the nation’s health-care system.

他重建了国家的医疗保健系统。

He revitalized a Justice Department that vigorously investigated police brutality and discrimination, and he began dismantling the private-prison system for federal inmates.

他重振了司法部，大力调查警察的暴行和歧视行为，并开始拆除联邦囚犯的私人监狱系统。

Obama nominated the first Latina justice to the Supreme Court, gave presidential support to marriage equality, and ended the U.S. military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, thus honoring the civil-rights tradition that had inspired him.

奥巴马提名了首位拉丁裔最高法院法官，对婚姻平等给予总统支持，并结束了美国军方的“不问不说”政策，从而尊重了激励他的民权传统。

And if his very existence inflamed America’s racist conscience, it also expanded the country’s anti-racist imagination.

如果说他的存在点燃了美国的种族主义良知，那么它也扩大了这个国家的反种族主义想象力。

Millions of young people now know their only president to have been an African American.

现在，数百万年轻人知道他们唯一的总统是非裔美国人。

Writing for The New Yorker , Jelani Cobb once noted that “until there was a black Presidency it was impossible to conceive of the limitations of one.” This is just as true of the possibilities.

杰拉尼·科布 (Jelani Cobb) 在为《纽约客》撰稿时曾指出，“在出现一位黑人总统之前，我们不可能想象黑人总统的局限性。”对于可能性来说也是如此。

In 2014, the Obama administration committed itself to reversing the War on Drugs through the power of presidential commutation.

2014年，奥巴马政府承诺通过总统减刑的权力扭转毒品战争。

The administration said that it could commute the sentences of as many as 10,000 prisoners.

政府表示，可以为多达 1 万名囚犯减刑。

As of November, the president had commuted only 944 sentences.

截至 11 月，总统仅减刑了 944 人。

By any measure, Obama’s effort fell woefully short, except for this small one: the measure of almost every other modern president who preceded him.

无论以何种标准衡量，奥巴马的努力都远远不够，除了这一小小的努力：他之前的几乎所有其他现代总统都采取了这一措施。

Obama’s 944 commutations are the most in nearly a century—and more than the past 11 presidents’ combined.

奥巴马的 944 次减刑是近一个世纪以来最多的一次，超过了过去 11 任总统的减刑总和。

Obama was born into a country where laws barring his very conception—let alone his ascendancy to the presidency—had long stood in force.

奥巴马出生在一个长期存在法律禁止他怀孕的国家——更不用说他登上总统宝座了。

A black president would always be a contradiction for a government that, throughout most of its history, had oppressed black people.

对于一个在其大部分历史上都压迫黑人的政府来说，黑人总统永远是一个矛盾。

The attempt to resolve this contradiction through Obama—a black man with deep roots in the white world—was remarkable.

通过奥巴马——一个深深扎根于白人世界的黑人——来解决这一矛盾的尝试是引人注目的。

The price it exacted, incredible.

它所付出的代价，令人难以置信。

The world it gave way to, unthinkable.

它让位于的世界是不可想象的。

When Barack Obama was 10, his father gave him a basketball, a gift that connected the two directly.

巴拉克·奥巴马 10 岁时，父亲送给他一个篮球，这份礼物将两人直接联系在一起。

Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii and raised by his mother, Ann Dunham, who was white, and her parents, Stanley and Madelyn.

奥巴马 1961 年出生于夏威夷，由白人母亲安·邓纳姆 (Ann Dunham) 以及父母斯坦利 (Stanley) 和玛德琳 (Madelyn) 抚养长大。

They loved him ferociously, supported him emotionally, and encouraged him intellectually.

他们热烈地爱着他，在情感上支持他，在理智上鼓励他。

They also told him he was black.

他们还告诉他他是黑人。

Ann gave him books to read about famous black people.

安给了他一些关于著名黑人的书。

When Obama’s mother had begun dating his father, the news had not been greeted with the threat of lynching (as it might have been in various parts of the continental United States), and Obama’s grandparents always spoke positively of his father.

当奥巴马的母亲开始与他的父亲约会时，这一消息并没有受到私刑的威胁（就像在美国大陆的许多地方可能发生的那样），奥巴马的祖父母总是积极评价他的父亲。

This biography makes Obama nearly unique among black people of his era.

这本传记使奥巴马在他那个时代的黑人中几乎是独一无二的。

In the president’s memoir, Dreams From My Father , he says he was not an especially talented basketball player, but he played with a consuming passion.

在总统的回忆录《父亲的梦想》中，他说自己并不是一个特别有天赋的篮球运动员，但他打球时充满了热情。

That passion was directed at something more than just the mastering of the pick-and-roll or the perfecting of his jump shot.

这种激情不仅仅在于掌握挡拆或完善跳投。

Obama came of age during the time of the University of Hawaii basketball team’s “Fabulous Five”—a name given to its all-black starting five, two decades before it would be resurrected at the University of Michigan by the likes of Chris Webber and Jalen Rose.

奥巴马在夏威夷大学篮球队的“神奇五人组”时期成年，这是该队全黑人首发五人组的名字，二十年后，这个名字在密歇根大学由克里斯·韦伯和贾伦·罗斯等人复活。

In his memoir, Obama writes that he would watch the University of Hawaii players laughing at “some inside joke,” winking “at the girls on the sidelines,” or “casually flipping lay-ups.” What Obama saw in the Fabulous Five was not just game, but a culture he found attractive:

奥巴马在回忆录中写道，他会看到夏威夷大学的球员们因“一些内部笑话”而大笑，“向场边的女孩们眨眼”，或者“随意上篮”。奥巴马在神话五人组中看到的不仅仅是游戏，而是一种他认为很有吸引力的文化：

These are lessons, particularly the last one, that for black people apply as much on the street as they do on the court.

这些教训，尤其是最后一个教训，对黑人来说在街上和在球场上一样适用。

Basketball was a link for Obama, a medium for downloading black culture from the mainland that birthed the Fabulous Five.

篮球是奥巴马的纽带，是从诞生了“神话五人”的大陆下载黑人文化的媒介。

Assessing his own thought process at the time, Obama writes, “I decided to become part of that world.” This is one of the most incredible sentences ever written in the long, decorated history of black memoir, if only because very few black people have ever enjoyed enough power to write it.

奥巴马在评估自己当时的思维过程时写道：“我决定成为那个世界的一部分。”这是漫长而辉煌的黑人回忆录史上最令人难以置信的句子之一，哪怕只是因为很少有黑人享有足够的权力来写这句话。

Historically, in black autobiography, to be remanded into the black race has meant exposure to a myriad of traumas, often commencing in childhood.

从历史上看，在黑人自传中，被归入黑人种族意味着要承受无数的创伤，而这些创伤往往从童年开始。

Frederick Douglass is separated from his grandmother.

弗雷德里克·道格拉斯与祖母分居。

The enslaved Harriet Ann Jacobs must constantly cope with the threat of rape before she escapes.

被奴役的哈丽特·安·雅各布斯在逃跑之前必须不断应对强奸的威胁。

After telling his teacher he wants to be a lawyer, Malcolm X is told that the job isn’t for “niggers.” Black culture often serves as the balm for such traumas, or even the means to resist them.

在告诉老师他想成为一名律师后，马尔科姆·X 被告知这份工作不适合“黑鬼”。黑人文化常常成为此类创伤的安慰药，甚至是抵抗这些创伤的手段。

Douglass finds the courage to face the “slave-breaker” Edward Covey after being given an allegedly enchanted root by “a genuine African” possessing powers from “the eastern nations.” Malcolm X’s dancing connects him to his “long-suppressed African instincts.” If black racial identity speaks to all the things done to people of recent African ancestry, black cultural identity was created in response to them.

道格拉斯在被拥有“东方国家”力量的“真正的非洲人”赋予了据称具有魔法的根后，找到了勇气面对“奴隶破坏者”爱德华·科维。马尔科姆·X 的舞蹈将他与“长期压抑的非洲本能”联系起来。如果黑人种族身份代表了对近代非洲血统的人所做的所有事情，那么黑人文化身份就是为了回应他们而创建的。

The division is not neat; the two are linked, and it is incredibly hard to be a full participant in the world of cultural identity without experiencing the trauma of racial identity.

划分不整齐；两者是相互联系的，要充分参与文化身份的世界而不经历种族身份的创伤是非常困难的。

Obama is somewhat different.

奥巴马则有些不同。

He writes of bloodying the nose of a white kid who called him a “coon,” and of chafing at racist remarks from a tennis coach, and of feeling offended after a white woman in his apartment building told the manager that he was following her.

他写道，一个称他为“浣熊”的白人孩子的鼻子流血了，他对一位网球教练的种族主义言论感到愤怒，并在他的公寓楼里一名白人妇女告诉经理他在跟踪她后感到被冒犯。

But the kinds of traumas that marked African Americans of his generation—beatings at the hands of racist police, being herded into poor schools, grinding out a life in a tenement building—were mostly abstract for him.

但他这一代非裔美国人所经历的那些创伤——遭到种族主义警察的殴打、被赶进贫穷的学校、在廉价公寓里过着艰难的生活——对他来说大多是抽象的。

Moreover, the kind of spatial restriction that most black people feel at an early age—having rocks thrown at you for being on the wrong side of the tracks, for instance—was largely absent from his life.

此外，大多数黑人在幼年时感受到的那种空间限制——例如，因为走错了铁轨而被扔石头——在他的生活中基本上不存在。

In its place, Obama was gifted with a well-stamped passport and admittance to elite private schools—all of which spoke of other identities, other lives and other worlds where the color line was neither determinative nor especially relevant.

取而代之的是，奥巴马获得了一本盖有印章的护照，并获得了精英私立学校的入学许可——所有这些都谈到了其他身份、其他生活和其他世界，在这些世界中，肤色界限既不是决定性的，也不是特别相关的。

Obama could have grown into a raceless cosmopolitan.

奥巴马本可以成长为一个无种族的世界主义者。

Surely he would have lived in a world of problems, but problems not embodied by him.

当然，他会生活在一个充满问题的世界里，但这些问题并不是他所体现的。

“I always felt as if being black was cool,” Obama told me while traveling to a campaign event.

“我总觉得黑人很酷，”奥巴马在参加竞选活动时告诉我。

He was sitting on Air Force One , his tie loosened, his shirtsleeves rolled up.

他坐在空军一号上，领带松开，衬衫袖子卷起来。

“[Being black] was not something to run away from but something to embrace.

“[成为黑人]不是要逃避的事情，而是要拥抱的事情。

Why that is, I think, is complicated.

我认为，为什么会这样，很复杂。

Part of it is I think that my mother thought black folks were cool, and if your mother loves you and is praising you—and says you look good, are smart—as you are, then you don’t kind of think in terms of How can I avoid this?

部分原因是我认为我的母亲认为黑人很酷，如果你的母亲爱你并赞扬你——并说你看起来不错，很聪明——就像你一样，那么你就不会考虑“我怎样才能避免这种情况？”

You feel pretty good about it.”

你对此感觉很好。”

As a child, Obama’s embrace of blackness was facilitated, not impeded, by white people.

小时候，奥巴马对黑人的拥抱是受到白人的促进而不是阻碍。

Obama’s mother pointed him toward the history and culture of African Americans.

奥巴马的母亲向他介绍了非裔美国人的历史和文化。

Stanley, his grandfather, who came originally from Kansas, took him to basketball games at the University of Hawaii, as well as to black bars.

他的祖父斯坦利来自堪萨斯州，带他去看夏威夷大学的篮球比赛以及黑酒吧。

Stanley introduced him to the black writer Frank Marshall Davis.

斯坦利把他介绍给黑人作家弗兰克·马歇尔·戴维斯。

The facilitation was as much indirect as direct.

这种促进既是直接的又是间接的。

Obama recalls watching his grandfather at those black bars and understanding that “most of the people in the bar weren’t there out of choice,” and that “our presence there felt forced.” From his mother’s life of extensive travel, he learned to value the significance of having a home.

奥巴马回忆说，他在那些黑色酒吧里看着他的祖父，并了解到“酒吧里的大多数人并不是出于选择”，而且“我们在那里的存在感觉是被迫的”。从母亲广泛旅行的生活中，他学会了重视拥有一个家的重要性。

That suspicion of rootlessness extends throughout Dreams From My Father .

这种对无根的怀疑贯穿于《父亲的梦想》中。

He describes integration as a “one-way street” on which black people are asked to abandon themselves to fully experience America’s benefits.

他将融合描述为一条“单行道”，黑人被要求放弃自己，以充分体验美国的好处。

Confronted with a woman named Joyce, a mixed-race, green-eyed college classmate who insists that she is not “black” but “multiracial,” Obama is scornful.

面对一位名叫乔伊斯（Joyce）的女人，她是一位混血、绿眼睛的大学同学，坚称自己不是“黑人”而是“多种族”，奥巴马对此表示蔑视。

“That was the problem with people like Joyce,” he writes.

“这就是像乔伊斯这样的人的问题，”他写道。

“They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people.” Later in the memoir, Obama tells the story of falling in love with a white woman.

“他们谈论了丰富的多元文化遗产，听起来确实不错，直到你注意到他们避开黑人。”在回忆录的后面，奥巴马讲述了爱上一名白人女性的故事。

During a visit to her family’s country house, he found himself in the library, which was filled with pictures of the woman’s illustrious relations.

在参观她家的乡间别墅时，他发现自己身处图书馆，里面摆满了这位女士杰出亲戚的照片。

But instead of being in awe, Obama realized that he and the woman lived in different worlds.

但奥巴马并没有感到敬畏，而是意识到他和那个女人生活在不同的世界。

“And I knew that if we stayed together, I’d eventually live in hers,” he writes.

“我知道，如果我们在一起，我最终会住在她的房子里，”他写道。

“Between the two of us, I was the one who knew how to live as an outsider.”

“在我们两个人当中，我是一个懂得如何作为局外人生活的人。”

After college, Obama found a home, as well as a sense of himself, working on the South Side of Chicago as a community organizer.

大学毕业后，奥巴马在芝加哥南区担任社区组织者，找到了自己的家，也找到了自我。

“When I started doing that work, my story merges with a larger story.

“当我开始做这项工作时，我的故事与一个更大的故事融为一体。

That happens naturally for a John Lewis,” he told me, referring to the civil-rights hero and Democratic congressman.

这对于约翰·刘易斯来说是很自然的事情，”他告诉我，他指的是这位民权英雄和民主党国会议员。

“That happens more naturally for you.

“这对你来说更自然。

It was less obvious to me.

这对我来说不太明显。

How do I pull all these different strains together: Kenya and Hawaii and Kansas, and white and black and Asian—how does that fit?

我如何将所有这些不同的菌株融合在一起：肯尼亚、夏威夷和堪萨斯，以及白人、黑人和亚洲人——它们如何契合？

And through action, through work, I suddenly see myself as part of the bigger process for, yes, delivering justice for the [African American community] and specifically the South Side community, the low-income people—justice on behalf of the African American community.

通过行动，通过工作，我突然将自己视为更大进程的一部分，是的，为[非裔美国人社区]，特别是南区社区，低收入人群伸张正义——代表非裔美国人社区伸张正义。

But also thereby promoting my ideas of justice and equality and empathy that my mother taught me were universal.

但也因此促进了我母亲教给我的正义、平等和同理心的普遍观念。

So I’m in a position to understand those essential parts of me not as separate and apart from any particular community but connected to every community.

因此，我能够理解我的那些重要部分，不是与任何特定社区分离或分离的，而是与每个社区都有联系的。

And I can fit the African American struggle for freedom and justice in the context of the universal aspiration for freedom and justice.”

我可以将非裔美国人争取自由和正义的斗争置于对自由和正义的普遍渴望的背景下。”

Throughout Obama’s 2008 campaign and into his presidency, this attitude proved key to his deep support in the black community.

在奥巴马 2008 年的整个竞选过程中以及他的总统任期内，这种态度被证明是他在黑人社区中获得深厚支持的关键。

African Americans, weary of high achievers who distanced themselves from their black roots, understood that Obama had paid a price for checking “black” on his census form, and for living black, for hosting Common, for brushing dirt off his shoulder during the primaries, for marrying a woman who looked like Michelle Obama.

非裔美国人厌倦了与黑人根源保持距离的成就卓著的人，他们明白，奥巴马为在人口普查表上勾选“黑人”、为黑人生活、为举办普通会议、为在初选期间拂去肩上的污垢、为娶了一个看起来像米歇尔·奥巴马的女人而付出了代价。

If women, as a gender, must suffer the constant evaluations and denigrations of men, black women must suffer that, plus a broad dismissal from the realm of what American society deems to be beautiful.

如果女性作为一种性别必须遭受男性不断的评价和诽谤，那么黑人女性也必须遭受这种痛苦，并且被美国社会认为美丽的领域广泛排斥。

But Michelle Obama is beautiful in the way that black people know themselves to be.

但米歇尔·奥巴马的美丽正如黑人所认识的那样。

Her prominence as first lady directly attacks a poison that diminishes black girls from the moment they are capable of opening a magazine or turning on a television.

她作为第一夫人的显赫地位直接攻击了一种毒药，这种毒药从黑人女孩能够打开杂志或打开电视的那一刻起就削弱了她们的力量。

The South Side of Chicago, where Obama began his political career, is home to arguably the most prominent and storied black political establishment in the country.

芝加哥南区是奥巴马开始其政治生涯的地方，可以说是美国最著名、最著名的黑人政治机构的所在地。

In addition to Oscar Stanton De Priest, the first African American elected to Congress in the 20th century, the South Side produced the city’s first black mayor, Harold Washington; Jesse Jackson, who twice ran for president; and Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American woman to win a Senate race.

除了 20 世纪第一位当选国会议员的非裔美国人奥斯卡·斯坦顿·德·普里斯特 (Oscar Stanton De Priest) 之外，南区还诞生了该市第一位黑人市长哈罗德·华盛顿 (Harold Washington)；杰西·杰克逊，曾两次竞选总统；卡罗尔·莫斯利·布劳恩 (Carol Moseley Braun)，第一位赢得参议院竞选的非洲裔美国女性。

These victories helped give rise to Obama’s own.

这些胜利催生了奥巴马自己的胜利。

Harold Washington served as an inspiration to Obama and looms heavily over the Chicago section of Dreams From My Father .

哈罗德·华盛顿是奥巴马的灵感来源，在《父亲的梦想》的芝加哥部分中占据着重要地位。

Washington forged the kind of broad coalition that Obama would later assemble nationally.

华盛顿组建了奥巴马后来在全国范围内组建的广泛联盟。

But Washington did this in the mid-1980s in segregated Chicago, and he had not had the luxury, as Obama did, of becoming black with minimal trauma.

但华盛顿在 20 世纪 80 年代中期在实行种族隔离的芝加哥做到了这一点，他并没有像奥巴马那样，以最小的创伤成为黑人。

“There was an edge to Harold that frightened some white voters,” David Axelrod, who worked for both Washington and Obama, told me recently.

“哈罗德的优势让一些白人选民感到害怕，”为华盛顿和奥巴马工作过的大卫·阿克塞尔罗德最近告诉我。

Axelrod recalled sitting around a conference table with Washington after he had won the Democratic primary for his reelection in 1987, just as the mayor was about to hold a press conference.

阿克塞尔罗德回忆起 1987 年赢得民主党连任初选后与华盛顿坐在会议桌旁，当时市长正要召开新闻发布会。

Washington asked what percentage of Chicago’s white vote he’d received.

华盛顿询问他获得了芝加哥白人选票的百分比。

“And someone said, ‘Well, you got 21 percent.

“有人说，‘好吧，你得了 21%。

And that’s really good because last time’ ”—in his successful 1983 mayoral campaign—“ ‘you only got 8,’ ” Axelrod recalled.

这真的很好，因为上次’”——在他 1983 年成功的市长竞选中——“‘你只得到了 8 个，’”阿克塞尔罗德回忆道。

“And he kind of smiled, sadly, and said, ‘You know, I probably spent 70 percent of my time in those white neighborhoods, and I think I’ve been a good mayor for everybody, and I got 21 percent of the white vote and we think it’s good.’ And he just kind of shook his head and said, ‘Ain’t it a bitch to be a black man in the land of the free and the home of the brave?’

“他有点悲伤地微笑着说，‘你知道，我可能 70% 的时间都在那些白人社区里度过，我认为我一直是每个人的好市长，我得到了 21% 的白人选票，我们认为这很好。’他只是摇摇头说，‘在自由的土地和勇敢的家园里做一个黑人不是一个婊子吗？’

“That was Harold.

“那是哈罗德。

He felt those things.

他感受到了那些东西。

He had fought in an all-black unit in World War II.

第二次世界大战期间，他曾在一支全黑人部队中作战。

He had come up in times—and that and the sort of indignities of what you had to do to come up through the machine really seared him.” During his 1983 mayoral campaign, Washington was loudly booed outside a church in northwest Chicago by middle-class Poles, Italians, and Irish, who feared blacks would uproot them.

他曾多次出现过——这一点以及你必须通过机器出现的那种侮辱确实让他感到灼痛。” 1983 年竞选市长期间，华盛顿在芝加哥西北部的一座教堂外遭到波兰、意大利和爱尔兰中产阶级的大声嘘声，他们担心黑人会把他们连根拔起。

“It was as vicious and ugly as anything you would have seen in the old South,” Axelrod said.

“这和你在旧南方看到的任何东西一样邪恶和丑陋，”阿克塞尔罗德说。

Obama’s ties to the South Side tradition that Washington represented were complicated.

奥巴马与华盛顿所代表的南方传统的关系很复杂。

Like Washington, Obama attempted to forge a coalition between black South Siders and the broader community.

与华盛顿一样，奥巴马也试图在南区黑人与更广泛的社区之间建立联盟。

But Obama, despite his adherence to black cultural mores, was, with his roots in Kansas and Hawaii, his Ivy League pedigree, and his ties to the University of Chicago, still an exotic out-of-towner.

但奥巴马尽管恪守黑人文化习俗，但由于他的根在堪萨斯和夏威夷、常春藤盟校出身以及与芝加哥大学的联系，他仍然是一个充满异国情调的外地人。

“They were a bit skeptical of him,” says Salim Muwakkil, a journalist who has covered Obama since before his days in the Illinois state Senate.

“他们对他有点怀疑，”记者萨利姆·穆瓦基尔(Salim Muwakkil)说，他在担任伊利诺伊州参议院之前就开始报道奥巴马。

“Chicago is a very insular community, and he came from nowhere, seemingly.”

“芝加哥是一个非常与世隔绝的社区，他似乎不知从何而来。”

Obama compounded people’s suspicions by refusing to humble himself and go along with the political currents of the South Side.

奥巴马拒绝谦卑自己并跟随南方的政治潮流，这加剧了人们的怀疑。

“A lot of the politicians, especially the black ones, were just leery of him,” Kaye Wilson, the godmother to Obama’s children and one of the president’s earliest political supporters, told me recently.

“很多政客，尤其是黑人政客，都对他心存戒心，”奥巴马孩子们的教母、总统最早的政治支持者之一凯·威尔逊 (Kaye Wilson) 最近告诉我。

But even as many in the black political community were skeptical of Obama, others encouraged him—sometimes when they voted against him.

但尽管黑人政治界的许多人对奥巴马持怀疑态度，其他人却鼓励他——有时他们投票反对他。

When Obama lost the 2000 Democratic-primary race against Bobby Rush, the African American incumbent congressman representing Illinois’ First Congressional District, the then-still-obscure future president experienced the defeat as having to do more with his age than his exoticism.

当奥巴马在 2000 年民主党初选中输给代表伊利诺伊州第一国会选区的非洲裔美国现任国会议员鲍比·拉什时，这位当时还默默无闻的未来总统经历了这次失败，因为他不得不更多地考虑他的年龄，而不是他的异国情调。

“I’d go meet people and I’d knock on doors and stuff, and some of the grandmothers who were the folks I’d been organizing and working with doing community stuff, they weren’t parroting back some notion of ‘You’re too Harvard,’ or ‘You’re too Hyde Park,’ or what have you,” Obama told me.

“我会去见人，我会敲门之类的，还有一些我一直在组织和合作做社区活动的祖母们，他们并没有人云亦云地说‘你太哈佛了’或‘你太海德公园了’之类的，”奥巴马告诉我。

“They’d say, ‘You’re a wonderful young man, you’re going to do great things.

“他们会说，‘你是一个很棒的年轻人，你会做出伟大的事情。

You just have to be patient.’ So I didn’t feel the loss as a rejection by black people.

你必须要有耐心。”所以我并没有因为被黑人拒绝而感到损失。

I felt the loss as ‘politics anywhere is tough.’ Politics in Chicago is especially tough.

我感到失败是因为“任何地方的政治都很艰难。”芝加哥的政治尤其艰难。

And being able to break through in the African American community is difficult because of the enormous loyalty that people feel towards anybody who has been around awhile.”

能够在非裔美国人社区取得突破是很困难的，因为人们对任何已经存在了一段时间的人都抱有巨大的忠诚度。”

There was no one around to compete for loyalty when Obama ran for Senate in 2004, or for president in 2008.

当奥巴马 2004 年竞选参议员或 2008 年竞选总统时，周围没有人可以争夺忠诚度。

He was no longer competing against other African Americans; he was representing them.

他不再与其他非裔美国人竞争；他不再与其他非裔美国人竞争。他代表他们。

“He had that hybridity which told the ‘do-gooders’—in Chicago they call the reformers the do-gooders—that he was acceptable,” Muwakkil told me.

“他的混杂性告诉‘行善者’——在芝加哥，他们称改革者为行善者——他是可以接受的，”穆瓦基勒告诉我。

Obama ran for the Senate two decades after the death of Harold Washington.

哈罗德·华盛顿去世二十年后，奥巴马竞选参议员。

Axelrod checked in on the precinct where Washington had been so loudly booed by white Chicagoans.

阿克塞尔罗德检查了华盛顿遭到芝加哥白人大声嘘声的辖区。

“Obama carried, against seven candidates for the Senate, almost the entire northwest side and that precinct,” he said.

“奥巴马在与七名参议院候选人的竞争中几乎赢得了整个西北区和那个选区，”他说。

“And I told him, ‘Harold’s smiling down on us tonight.’ ”

“我告诉他，‘哈罗德今晚会对我们微笑。’”

Ian Allen Obama believes that his statewide victory for the Illinois Senate seat held particular portent for the events of 2008.

伊恩·艾伦·奥巴马 (Ian Allen Obama) 认为，他在伊利诺伊州参议院席位上获得全州范围的胜利对于 2008 年发生的事件具有特殊的预兆。

“Illinois is the most demographically representative state in the country,” he told me.

“伊利诺伊州是美国人口最具代表性的州，”他告诉我。

“If you took all the percentages of black, white, Latino; rural, urban; agricultural, manufacturing—[if] you took that cross section across the country and you shrank it, it would be Illinois.”

“如果你计算黑人、白人、拉丁裔的所有百分比；农村、城市；农业、制造业——[如果]你把整个国家的横截面缩小，那就是伊利诺伊州。”

Illinois effectively allowed Obama to play a scrimmage before the big national game in 2008.

伊利诺伊州实际上允许奥巴马在 2008 年全国大型比赛之前进行混战。

“When I ran for the Senate I had to go into southern Illinois, downstate Illinois, farming communities—some with very tough racial histories, some areas where there just were no African Americans of any number,” Obama told me.

奥巴马告诉我：“当我竞选参议员时，我必须深入伊利诺伊州南部、伊利诺伊州北部和农业社区，其中一些地区有着非常严重的种族历史，一些地区根本没有任何非洲裔美国人。”

“And when we won that race, not just an African American from Chicago, but an African American with an exotic history and [the] name Barack Hussein Obama, [it showed that I] could connect with and appeal to a much broader audience.”

“当我们赢得那场比赛时，不仅是一位来自芝加哥的非裔美国人，而且是一位具有异国情调的历史和名字巴拉克·侯赛因·奥巴马的非裔美国人，[这表明我]可以与更广泛的受众建立联系并吸引他们。”

The mix of Obama’s “hybridity” and the changing times allowed him to extend his appeal beyond the white ethnic corners of Chicago, past the downstate portions of Illinois, and out into the country at large.

奥巴马的“混血性”和时代的变迁使他的吸引力超越了芝加哥的白人聚居区，超越了伊利诺伊州的南部地区，并扩展到了整个国家。

“Ben Nelson, one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate, from Nebraska, would only bring in one national Democrat to campaign for him,” Obama recalls.

“来自内布拉斯加州的本·纳尔逊是参议院最保守的民主党人之一，他只会引进一名全国民主党人为他竞选，”奥巴马回忆道。

“And it was me.

“那就是我。

And so part of the reason I was willing to run [for president in 2008] was that I had had two years in which we were generating enormous crowds all across the country—and the majority of those crowds were not African American; and they were in pretty remote places, or unlikely places.

因此，我愿意竞选（2008 年总统）的部分原因是，在我的两年里，我们在全国各地吸引了大量的人群，而这些人群中的大多数不是非裔美国人；他们是非裔美国人。而且他们都在相当偏远的地方，或者说不太可能的地方。

They weren’t just big cities or they weren’t just liberal enclaves.

它们不仅仅是大城市，也不仅仅是自由主义飞地。

So what that told me was, it was possible.”

所以这告诉我，这是可能的。”

What those crowds saw was a black candidate unlike any other before him.

这些人群看到的是一位与他之前的任何其他人都不同的黑人候选人。

To simply point to Obama’s white mother, or to his African father, or even to his rearing in Hawaii, is to miss the point.

简单地指出奥巴马的白人母亲，或者他的非洲父亲，甚至他在夏威夷的成长经历，都是没有抓住重点的。

For most African Americans, white people exist either as a direct or an indirect force for bad in their lives.

对于大多数非裔美国人来说，白人的存在要么是他们生活中的坏事的直接或间接力量。

Biraciality is no shield against this; often it just intensifies the problem.

混血儿身份并不能阻止这一点。通常它只会加剧问题。

What proved key for Barack Obama was not that he was born to a black man and a white woman, but that his white family approved of the union, and approved of the child who came from it.

事实证明，对巴拉克·奥巴马来说，关键并不是他是黑人和白人妇女所生，而是他的白人家庭批准了他们的结合，也批准了他们所生的孩子。

They did this in 1961—a time when sex between black men and white women, in large swaths of the country, was not just illegal but fraught with mortal danger.

他们在 1961 年就这么做了——当时，在美国大部分地区，黑人男性和白人女性之间的性行为不仅是非法的，而且还充满致命的危险。

But that danger is not part of Obama’s story.

但这种危险并不是奥巴马故事的一部分。

The first white people he ever knew, the ones who raised him, were decent in a way that very few black people of that era experienced.

他认识的第一批白人，那些抚养他长大的白人，在某种程度上是那个时代很少有黑人经历过的正派。

I asked Obama what he made of his grandparents’ impressively civilized reception of his father.

我问奥巴马，他对祖父母对他父亲令人印象深刻的文明接待有何看法。

“It wasn’t Harry Belafonte,” Obama said laughingly of his father.

“这不是哈里·贝拉方特，”奥巴马笑着谈到他的父亲。

“This was like an African African.

“这就像一个非洲人。

And he was like a blue-black brother.

他就像一个蓝黑兄弟。

Nilotic.

尼罗河。

And so, yeah, I will always give my grandparents credit for that.

所以，是的，我会永远相信我的祖父母。

I’m not saying they were happy about it.

我并不是说他们对此感到高兴。

I’m not saying that they were not, after the guy leaves, looking at each other like, ‘What the heck?’ But whatever misgivings they had, they never expressed to me, never spilled over into how they interacted with me.

我并不是说，在那个人离开后，他们不会互相看着对方，“到底是什么？”但无论他们有什么疑虑，他们都从未向我表达过，也从未蔓延到他们与我互动的方式中。

“Now, part of it, as I say in my book, was we were in this unique environment in Hawaii where I think it was much easier.

“现在，正如我在书中所说，部分原因是我们处于夏威夷这个独特的环境中，我认为那里的事情要容易得多。

I don’t know if it would have been as easy for them if they were living in Chicago at the time, because the lines just weren’t as sharply drawn in Hawaii as they were on the mainland.”

我不知道如果他们当时住在芝加哥，这对他们来说是否会那么容易，因为夏威夷的界限不像大陆那么清晰。”

Obama’s early positive interactions with his white family members gave him a fundamentally different outlook toward the wider world than most blacks of the 1960s had.

奥巴马早期与白人家庭成员的积极互动使他对更广阔的世界有了与 20 世纪 60 年代大多数黑人截然不同的看法。

Obama told me he rarely had “the working assumption of discrimination, the working assumption that white people would not treat me right or give me an opportunity or judge me [other than] on the basis of merit.” He continued, “The kind of working assumption” that white people would discriminate against him or treat him poorly “is less embedded in my psyche than it is, say, with Michelle.”

奥巴马告诉我，他很少有“歧视的有效假设，白人不会正确对待我或给我机会或根据优点来评判我”。他继续说，“白人会歧视他或虐待他的那种有效假设”“不像米歇尔那样根深蒂固”。

In this, the first lady is more representative of black America than her husband is.

在这一点上，第一夫人比她的丈夫更能代表美国黑人。

African Americans typically raise their children to protect themselves against a presumed hostility from white teachers, white police officers, white supervisors, and white co-workers.

非裔美国人抚养孩子通常是为了保护自己免受白人教师、白人警察、白人主管和白人同事的敌意。

The need for that defense is, more often than not, reinforced either directly by actual encounters or indirectly by observing the vast differences between one’s own experience and those across the color line.

这种防御的必要性往往是通过实际遭遇直接加强，或者通过观察自己的经历与跨越肤色界限的经历之间的巨大差异而间接加强。

Marty Nesbitt, the president’s longtime best friend, who, like Obama, had positive interactions with whites at a relatively early age, told me that when he and his wife went to buy their first car, she was insistent on buying from a black salesperson.

总统的长期好友马蒂·内斯比特（Marty Nesbitt）和奥巴马一样，在很小的时候就与白人进行了积极的互动。他告诉我，当他和他的妻子去购买他们的第一辆汽车时，她坚持从黑人销售人员那里购买。

“I’m like, ‘We’ve got to find a salesman,’ ” Nesbitt said.

“我想，‘我们必须找到一名推销员，’”内斯比特说。

“She’s like, ‘No, no, no. We’re waiting for the brother.’ And I’m like, ‘He’s with a customer.’ They were filling out documents and she was like, ‘We’re going to stay around.’ And a white guy came up to us.

“她说，‘不，不，不。我们正在等那个兄弟。”我说，“他和一位顾客在一起。”他们正在填写文件，她说，“我们要留下来。”然后一个白人向我们走来。

‘Can I help you?’ ‘Nope.’ ” Nesbitt was not out to condemn anyone with this story.

“我可以帮你吗？”“不行。”内斯比特并不是想用这个故事来谴责任何人。

He was asserting that “the willingness of African Americans [in Chicago] to help lift each other up is powerful.”

他断言“芝加哥的非裔美国人互相帮助的意愿是强大的。”

But that willingness to help is also a defense, produced by decades of discrimination.

但这种乐于助人的态度也是一种防御，是几十年来的歧视所产生的。

Obama sees race through a different lens, Kaye Wilson told me.

凯·威尔逊告诉我，奥巴马从不同的角度看待种族。

“It’s just very different from ours,” she explained.

“这与我们的非常不同，”她解释道。

“He’s got buddies that are white, and they’re his buddies, and they love him.

“他有白人朋友，他们就是他的朋友，他们爱他。

And I don’t think they love him just because he’s the president.

我不认为他们爱他只是因为他是总统。

They love him because they’re his friends from Hawaii, some from college and all.

他们爱他，因为他们是他来自夏威夷的朋友，有些是大学同学等等。

“So I think he’s got that, whereas I think growing up in the racist United States, we enter this thing with, you know, ‘I’m looking at you.

“所以我认为他明白这一点，而我认为在种族主义的美国长大，我们进入这件事时，你知道，‘我在看着你。

I’m not trusting you to be one hundred with me.’ And I think he grew up in a way that he had to trust [white people]—how can you live under the roof with people and think that they don’t love you?

我不相信你能和我在一起一百岁。’而且我认为他在成长过程中必须信任[白人]——你怎么能和别人住在同一屋檐下，却认为他们不爱你呢？

He needs that frame of reference.

他需要那个参照系。

He needs that lens.

他需要那个镜头。

If he didn’t have it, it would be …

如果他没有的话，那就是……

a Jesse Jackson, you know?

杰西·杰克逊，你知道吗？

Or Al Sharpton.

或者艾尔·夏普顿。

Different lens.”

不同的镜头。”

That lens, born of literally relating to whites, allowed Obama to imagine that he could be the country’s first black president.

这个镜头实际上与白人有关，让奥巴马想象他可以成为美国第一位黑人总统。

“If I walked into a room and it’s a bunch of white farmers, trade unionists, middle age—I’m not walking in thinking, Man, I’ve got to show them that I’m normal ,” Obama explained.

“如果我走进一个房间，看到一群白人农民、工会成员、中年人，我走进去时不会想，伙计，我必须向他们表明我是正常人，”奥巴马解释道。

“I walk in there, I think, with a set of assumptions: like, these people look just like my grandparents.

“我想，我走进那里时带着一系列假设：比如，这些人看起来就像我的祖父母。

And I see the same Jell‑O mold that my grandmother served, and they’ve got the same, you know, little stuff on their mantelpieces.

我看到了我祖母用过的果冻模具，他们的壁炉架上也有同样的小东西。

And so I am maybe disarming them by just assuming that we’re okay.”

所以我也许只是假设我们没事，就解除了他们的武装。”

What Obama was able to offer white America is something very few African Americans could—trust.

奥巴马能够为美国白人提供的东西是很少有非裔美国人可以信任的。

The vast majority of us are, necessarily, too crippled by our defenses to ever consider such a proposition.

我们中的绝大多数人，必然因为自己的防御能力太弱而无法考虑这样的提议。

But Obama, through a mixture of ancestral connections and distance from the poisons of Jim Crow, can credibly and sincerely trust the majority population of this country.

但由于祖先的联系和远离种族隔离的毒害，奥巴马可以可信地、真诚地信任这个国家的大多数人口。

That trust is reinforced, not contradicted, by his blackness.

他的黑人身份加强了这种信任，而不是反驳了这种信任。

Obama isn’t shuffling before white power (Herman Cain’s “shucky ducky” act) or flattering white ego (O.

奥巴马并没有在白人权力面前摇摇欲坠（赫尔曼·凯恩的“傻鸭”行为），也没有奉承白人的自我（O.

J.

J。

Simpson’s listing not being seen as black as a great accomplishment).

辛普森的上市并没有被视为一项伟大的成就）。

That, too, is defensive, and deep down, I suspect, white people know it.

这也是一种防御性的，我怀疑白人内心深处也知道这一点。

He stands firm in his own cultural traditions and says to the country something virtually no black person can, but every president must: “I believe you.”

他坚定地坚持自己的文化传统，并向全国说出几乎没有黑人能做到的、但每位总统都必须说的话：“我相信你。”

Just after Columbus Day , I accompanied the president and his formidable entourage on a visit to North Carolina A&T State University, in Greensboro.

哥伦布日刚过，我就陪同总统及其令人敬畏的随行人员访问了位于格林斯博罗的北卡罗来纳州 A&T 州立大学。

Four days earlier, The Washington Post had published an old audio clip that featured Donald Trump lamenting a failed sexual conquest and exhorting the virtues of sexual assault.

四天前，《华盛顿邮报》发表了一段旧音频剪辑，其中唐纳德·特朗普对失败的性征服表示哀叹，并劝诫性侵犯的优点。

The next day, Trump claimed that this was “locker room” talk.

第二天，特朗普声称这是“更衣室”谈话。

As we flew to North Carolina, the president was in a state of bemused disbelief.

当我们飞往北卡罗来纳州时，总统陷入了困惑和难以置信的状态。

He plopped down in a chair in the staff cabin of Air Force One and said, “I’ve been in a lot of locker rooms.

他一屁股坐在空军一号员工舱的椅子上，说道：“我去过很多更衣室。

I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.” He was casual and relaxed.

我想我以前从未听过这个说法。”他很随意、放松。

A feeling of cautious inevitability emanated from his staff, and why not?

他的员工们散发出一种谨慎的必然感，为什么不呢？

Every day seemed to bring a new, more shocking revelation or piece of evidence showing Trump to be unfit for the presidency: He had lost nearly $1 billion in a single year.

似乎每天都会带来新的、更令人震惊的启示或证据，表明特朗普不适合担任总统：他在一年内损失了近 10 亿美元。

He had likely not paid taxes in 18 years.

他很可能已经 18 年没有纳税了。

He was running a “university,” for which he was under formal legal investigation.

他经营着一所“大学”，为此他正在接受正式的法律调查。

He had trampled on his own campaign’s messaging by engaging in a Twitter crusade against a former beauty-pageant contestant.

他在推特上发起了针对一名前选美选手的讨伐活动，践踏了自己竞选活动的信息。

He had been denounced by leadership in his own party, and the trickle of prominent Republicans—both in and out of office—who had publicly repudiated him threatened to become a geyser.

他受到了自己党内领导层的谴责，而公开否认他的共和党知名人士——无论是在任还是在任——的涓滴声都威胁着要成为间歇泉。

At this moment, the idea that a campaign so saturated in open bigotry, misogyny, chaos, and possible corruption could win a national election was ludicrous.

此时此刻，认为一场充满公开偏执、厌女症、混乱和可能的腐败的竞选活动能够赢得全国大选的想法是荒谬的。

This was America.

这就是美国。

The president was going to North Carolina to keynote a campaign rally for Clinton, but first he was scheduled for a conversation about My Brother’s Keeper, his initiative on behalf of disadvantaged youth.

总统原本要去北卡罗来纳州为克林顿的竞选集会发表主题演讲，但他首先计划就“我兄弟的守护者”进行对话，这是他代表弱势青年发起的倡议。

Announcing My Brother’s Keeper—or MBK, as it’s come to be called—in 2014, the president had sought to avoid giving the program a partisan valence, noting that it was “not some big new government program.” Instead, it would involve the government in concert with the nonprofit and business sectors to intervene in the lives of young men of color who were “at risk.” MBK serves as a kind of network for those elements of federal, state, and local government that might already have a presence in the lives of these young men.

2014 年，总统宣布了“我兄弟的守护者”（后来被称为“MBK”）计划，并试图避免赋予该计划党派色彩，并指出它“不是什么大型的新政府计划”。相反，它将让政府与非营利组织和商业部门合作，干预“处于危险之中”的有色人种年轻人的生活。 MBK 充当联邦、州和地方政府部门的一种网络，这些部门可能已经出现在这些年轻人的生活中。

It is a quintessentially Obama program—conservative in scope, with impacts that are measurable.

这是典型的奥巴马计划——范围保守，但影响是可衡量的。

“It comes right out of his own life,” Broderick Johnson, the Cabinet secretary and an assistant to the president, who heads MBK, told me recently.

“这来自他自己的生活，”内阁秘书、总统助理、MBK 负责人布罗德里克·约翰逊 (Broderick Johnson) 最近告诉我。

“I have heard him say, ‘I don’t want us to have a bunch of forums on race.’ He reminds people, ‘Yeah, we can talk about this.

“我听他说，‘我不想让我们有一堆关于种族的论坛。’他提醒人们，‘是的，我们可以讨论这个。

But what are we going to do ?’ ” On this afternoon in North Carolina, what Obama did was sit with a group of young men who’d turned their lives around in part because of MBK.

但我们要做什么呢？’”今天下午，在北卡罗来纳州，奥巴马所做的就是与一群年轻人坐在一起，他们的生活在一定程度上因为 MBK 而发生了改变。

They told stories of being in the street, of choosing quick money over school, of their homes being shot up, and—through the help of mentoring or job programs brokered by MBK—transitioning into college or a job.

他们讲述了流落街头的故事，选择快速赚钱而不是上学的故事，他们的房屋被炸毁的故事，以及通过 MBK 中介的指导或工作计划的帮助过渡到大学或工作的故事。

Obama listened solemnly and empathetically to each of them.

奥巴马严肃而富有同情心地聆听了他们每一个人的发言。

“It doesn’t take that much,” he told them.

“不需要那么多，”他告诉他们。

“It just takes someone laying hands on you and saying, ‘Hey, man, you count.’ ”

“只需要有人把手放在你身上并对你说，‘嘿，伙计，你很重要。’”

When he asked the young men whether they had a message he should take back to policy makers in Washington, D.C., one observed that despite their best individual efforts, they still had to go back to the very same deprived neighborhoods that had been the sources of trouble for them.

当他问这些年轻人是否有什么信息应该带回给华盛顿特区的政策制定者时，其中一位年轻人指出，尽管他们尽了最大的个人努力，但他们仍然不得不回到那些给他们带来麻烦的贫困社区。

“It’s your environment,” the young man said.

“这是你的环境，”年轻人说。

“You can do what you want, but you still gotta go back to the hood.”

“你可以做你想做的事，但你还是得回到引擎盖。”

He was correct.

他是对的。

The ghettos of America are the direct result of decades of public-policy decisions: the redlining of real-estate zoning maps, the expanded authority given to prosecutors, the increased funding given to prisons.

美国的贫民窟是数十年公共政策决策的直接结果：房地产分区地图的红线、检察官权力的扩大、监狱资金的增加。

And all of this was done on the backs of people still reeling from the 250-year legacy of slavery.

而所有这一切都是在人们仍为 250 年奴隶制遗留问题所困扰的人们的支持下完成的。

The results of this negative investment are clear—African Americans rank at the bottom of nearly every major socioeconomic measure in the country.

这种负投资的结果是显而易见的——非洲裔美国人在该国几乎所有主要社会经济指标中都排名垫底。

Obama’s formula for closing this chasm between black and white America, like that of many progressive politicians today, proceeded from policy designed for all of America.

奥巴马弥合美国黑人和白人之间鸿沟的方案，就像当今许多进步政客的方案一样，源自为全体美国人设计的政策。

Blacks disproportionately benefit from this effort, since they are disproportionately in need.

黑人从这项努力中受益匪浅，因为他们的需求尤为严重。

The Affordable Care Act, which cut the uninsured rate in the black community by at least a third, was Obama’s most prominent example.

《平价医疗法案》是奥巴马最突出的例子，该法案将黑人社区的未参保率降低了至少三分之一。

Its full benefit has yet to be felt by African Americans, because several states in the South have declined to expand Medicaid.

非裔美国人尚未感受到其全部好处，因为南方的几个州拒绝扩大医疗补助范围。

But when the president and I were meeting, the ACA’s advocates believed that pressure on state budgets would force expansion, and there was evidence to support this: Louisiana had expanded Medicaid earlier in 2016, and advocates were gearing up for wars to be waged in Georgia and Virginia.

但当总统和我会面时，平价医疗法案的支持者认为，州预算压力将迫使其扩张，并且有证据支持这一点：路易斯安那州在 2016 年初扩大了医疗补助计划，支持者们正在为在乔治亚州和弗吉尼亚州发动战争做准备。

Obama also emphasized the need for a strong Justice Department with a deep commitment to nondiscrimination.

奥巴马还强调需要一个强有力的司法部，并坚定地致力于非歧视。

When Obama moved into the White House in 2009, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division “was in shambles,” former Attorney General Eric Holder told me recently.

前司法部长埃里克·霍尔德 (Eric Holder) 最近告诉我，当奥巴马 2009 年入主白宫时，司法部民权部门“一团糟”。

“I mean, I had been there for 12 years as a line guy.

“我的意思是，我已经在那里当了 12 年的排队员。

I started out in ’76, so I served under Republicans and Democrats.

我从 76 年开始工作，所以我曾在共和党和民主党手下任职。

And what the [George W.] Bush administration, what the Bush DOJ did, was unlike anything that had ever happened before in terms of politicized hiring.” The career civil servants below the political appointees, Holder said, were not even invited to the meetings in which the key hiring and policy decisions were made.

就政治化招聘而言，[乔治·W·布什]政府、布什司法部的所作所为与以前发生过的任何事情都不同。”霍尔德说，政治任命人员以下的职业公务员甚至没有被邀请参加做出关键招聘和政策决定的会议。

After Obama’s inauguration, Holder told me, “I remember going to tell all the folks at the Civil Rights Division, ‘The Civil Rights Division is open for business again.’ The president gave me additional funds to hire people.”

奥巴马就职后，霍尔德告诉我，“我记得要告诉民权部门的所有人员，‘民权部门再次开门营业。’总统给了我额外的资金来雇用人员。”

The political press developed a narrative that because Obama felt he had to modulate his rhetoric on race, Holder was the administration’s true, and thus blacker, conscience.

政治媒体发展了一种说法，因为奥巴马觉得他必须调整他在种族问题上的言论，霍尔德才是政府真正的、因此更黑暗的良心。

Holder is certainly blunter, and this worried some of the White House staff.

霍尔德确实比较直率，这让一些白宫工作人员感到担忧。

Early in Obama’s first term, Holder gave a speech on race in which he said the United States had been a “nation of cowards” on the subject.

在奥巴马第一任期初期，霍尔德发表了一场关于种族的演讲，他在演讲中表示，美国在这个问题上是一个“懦夫国家”。

But positioning the two men as opposites elides an important fact: Holder was appointed by the president, and went only as far as the president allowed.

但将这两个人定位为对立的人忽略了一个重要事实：霍尔德是由总统任命的，并且只在总统允许的范围内行事。

I asked Holder whether he had toned down his rhetoric after that controversial speech.

我问霍尔德，在那次有争议的演讲之后，他的言辞是否有所缓和。

“Nope,” he said.

“不，”他说。

Reflecting on his relationship with the president, Holder said, “We were also kind of different people, you know?

霍尔德在反思他与总统的关系时说：“我们也是不同的人，你知道吗？

He is the Zen guy.

他是禅宗人。

And I’m kind of the hot-blooded West Indian.

我是一个热血的西印度人。

And I thought we made a good team, but there’s nothing that I ever did or said that I don’t think he would have said, ‘I support him 100 percent.’

我认为我们组成了一支优秀的团队，但我所做或所说的一切，我认为他不会说，‘我百分百支持他。’

“Now, the ‘nation of cowards’ speech, the president might have used a different phrase—maybe, probably.

“现在，在‘懦夫之国’的演讲中，总统可能会使用不同的措辞——也许，也许。

But he and I share a worldview, you know?

但他和我有共同的世界观，你知道吗？

And when I hear people say, ‘Well, you are blacker than him’ or something like that, I think, What are you all talking about?

当我听到人们说，‘好吧，你比他更黑’或类似的话时，我想，你们在说什么？

”

”

For much of his presidency, a standard portion of Obama’s speeches about race riffed on black people’s need to turn off the television, stop eating junk food, and stop blaming white people for their problems.

在他担任总统期间的大部分时间里，奥巴马有关种族的演讲的标准部分都是反复强调黑人需要关掉电视、停止吃垃圾食品、停止将自己的问题归咎于白人。

Obama would deliver this lecture to any black audience, regardless of context.

奥巴马将向任何黑人听众发表这次演讲，无论背景如何。

It was bizarre, for instance, to see the president warning young men who’d just graduated from Morehouse College, one of the most storied black colleges in the country, about making “excuses” and blaming whites.

例如，看到总统警告刚从莫尔豪斯学院（美国最著名的黑人学院之一）毕业的年轻人不要找“借口”并指责白人，这很奇怪。

This part of the Obama formula is the most troubling, and least thought-out.

奥巴马公式的这一部分是最令人不安、也是最不经过深思熟虑的。

This judgment emerges from my own biography.

这个判断来自我自己的传记。

I am the product of black parents who encouraged me to read, of black teachers who felt my work ethic did not match my potential, of black college professors who taught me intellectual rigor.

我是鼓励我读书的黑人父母的产物，是觉得我的职业道德与我的潜力不符的黑人老师的产物，是教会我学术严谨性的黑人大学教授的产物。

And they did this in a world that every day insulted their humanity.

他们在一个每天都在侮辱人性的世界里做到了这一点。

It was not so much that the black layabouts and deadbeats Obama invoked in his speeches were unrecognizable.

奥巴马在演讲中提到的那些游手好闲的黑人和游手好闲的人并不是无法辨认。

I had seen those people too.

我也见过那些人。

But I’d also seen the same among white people.

但我在白人中也看到了同样的情况。

If black men were overrepresented among drug dealers and absentee dads of the world, it was directly related to their being underrepresented among the Bernie Madoffs and Kenneth Lays of the world.

如果说黑人在世界各地的毒贩和缺席父亲中所占比例过高，那么这与他们在伯尼·麦道夫和肯尼思·莱斯家族中所占比例不足直接相关。

Power was what mattered, and what characterized the differences between black and white America was not a difference in work ethic, but a system engineered to place one on top of the other.

权力才是最重要的，美国黑人和白人之间的差异并不是职业道德的差异，而是一种旨在将一个人置于另一个人之上的制度。

The mark of that system is visible at every level of American society, regardless of the quality of one’s choices.

无论个人选择的质量如何，该制度的印记在美国社会的各个层面都可见。

For instance, the unemployment rate among black college graduates (4.1 percent) is almost the same as the unemployment rate among white high-school graduates (4.6 percent).

例如，黑人大学毕业生的失业率（4.1%）与白人高中毕业生的失业率（4.6%）几乎相同。

But that college degree is generally purchased at a higher price by blacks than by whites.

但黑人购买大学学位的价格通常高于白人。

According to research by the Brookings Institution, African Americans tend to carry more student debt four years after graduation ($53,000 versus $28,000) and suffer from a higher default rate on their loans (7.6 percent versus 2.4 percent) than white Americans.

根据布鲁金斯学会的研究，与美国白人相比，非裔美国人在毕业四年后往往背负更多的学生债务（53,000 美元对 28,000 美元），并且贷款违约率更高（7.6% 对 2.4%）。

This is both the result and the perpetuator of a sprawling wealth gap between the races.

这既是种族之间不断扩大的贫富差距的结果，也是其延续的原因。

White households, on average, hold seven times as much wealth as black households—a difference so large as to make comparing the “black middle class” and “white middle class” meaningless; they’re simply not comparable.

白人家庭平均拥有的财富是黑人家庭的七倍——这种差异之大以至于“黑人中产阶级”和“白人中产阶级”的比较毫无意义；它们根本没有可比性。

According to Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University who studies economic mobility, black families making $100,000 a year or more live in more-disadvantaged neighborhoods than white families making less than $30,000.

纽约大学研究经济流动性的社会学家帕特里克·夏基 (Patrick Sharkey) 表示，年收入 10 万美元或以上的黑人家庭比年收入低于 3 万美元的白人家庭生活在更贫困的社区。

This gap didn’t just appear by magic; it’s the result of the government’s effort over many decades to create a pigmentocracy—one that will continue without explicit intervention.

这个差距并不是凭空出现的，而是凭空出现的。这是政府几十年来努力建立色素统治的结果——这种统治将在没有明确干预的情况下继续下去。

Obama had been on the record as opposing reparations.

奥巴马曾公开表示反对赔偿。

But now, late in his presidency, he seemed more open to the idea—in theory, at least, if not in practice.

但现在，在他担任总统的后期，他似乎对这个想法更加开放——至少在理论上，如果不是在实践中。

“Theoretically, you can make obviously a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps,” Obama said, referencing the gulf in education, wealth, and employment that separates black and white America.

“从理论上讲，你显然可以提出一个强有力的论据，即几个世纪的奴隶制、吉姆·克劳法和歧视是造成所有这些差距的主要原因，”奥巴马说，他指的是美国黑人和白人在教育、财富和就业方面的鸿沟。

“That those were wrongs to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it’s not in the form of individual reparations checks but in the form of a Marshall Plan.”

“这些对整个黑人社区，特别是黑人家庭来说是错误的，为了缩小这一差距，社会有道德义务进行大规模、积极的投资，即使不是以个人赔偿支票的形式，而是以马歇尔计划的形式。”

The political problems with turning the argument for reparations into reality are manifold, Obama said.

奥巴马表示，将赔偿主张变为现实存在多方面的政治问题。

“If you look at countries like South Africa, where you had a black majority, there have been efforts to tax and help that black majority, but it hasn’t come in the form of a formal reparations program.

“如果你看看像南非这样的黑人占多数的国家，人们一直在努力对黑人占多数的人征税和提供帮助，但并没有以正式的赔偿计划的形式出现。

You have countries like India that have tried to help untouchables, with essentially affirmative-action programs, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed the structure of their societies.

像印度这样的国家试图通过实质上的平权行动计划来帮助贱民，但这并没有从根本上改变他们的社会结构。

So the bottom line is that it’s hard to find a model in which you can practically administer and sustain political support for those kinds of efforts.”

因此，最重要的是，很难找到一种可以切实管理和维持对此类努力的政治支持的模式。”

Obama went on to say that it would be better, and more realistic, to get the country to rally behind a robust liberal agenda and build on the enormous progress that’s been made toward getting white Americans to accept nondiscrimination as a basic operating premise.

奥巴马接着表示，更好、更现实的做法是让国家团结起来支持强有力的自由主义议程，并在让美国白人接受非歧视作为基本运作前提方面取得的巨大进展的基础上再接再厉。

But the progress toward nondiscrimination did not appear overnight.

但非歧视的进展并非一蹴而就。

It was achieved by people willing to make an unpopular argument and live on the frontier of public opinion.

它是由那些愿意提出不受欢迎的论点并生活在公众舆论前沿的人们实现的。

I asked him whether it wasn’t—despite the practical obstacles—worth arguing that the state has a collective responsibility not only for its achievements but for its sins.

我问他，尽管存在实际障碍，是否值得争论的是，国家不仅对其成就负有集体责任，而且对其罪恶负有集体责任。

“I want my children—I want Malia and Sasha—to understand that they’ve got responsibilities beyond just what they themselves have done,” Obama said.

奥巴马说：“我希望我的孩子们——我希望玛利亚和萨莎明白，他们的责任超出了他们自己所做的事情。”

“That they have a responsibility to the larger community and the larger nation, that they should be sensitive to and extra thoughtful about the plight of people who have been oppressed in the past, are oppressed currently.

“他们对更大的社区和更大的国家负有责任，他们应该对过去受压迫的人和目前受到压迫的人们的困境保持敏感和额外的考虑。

So that’s a wisdom that I want to transmit to my kids …

所以这是我想传授给我的孩子们的智慧……

But I would say that’s a high level of enlightenment that you’re looking to have from a majority of the society.

但我想说，这是你希望从社会大多数人那里得到的高水平的启蒙。

And it may be something that future generations are more open to, but I am pretty confident that for the foreseeable future, using the argument of nondiscrimination, and ‘Let’s get it right for the kids who are here right now,’ and giving them the best chance possible, is going to be a more persuasive argument.”

这可能是后代人更愿意接受的事情，但我非常有信心，在可预见的未来，使用非歧视的论点，‘让我们为现在在这里的孩子做正确的事情’，并为他们提供最好的机会，将是一个更有说服力的论点。”

Obama is unfailingly optimistic about the empathy and capabilities of the American people.

奥巴马对美国人民的同理心和能力始终持乐观态度。

His job necessitates this: “At some level what the people want to feel is that the person leading them sees the best in them,” he told me.

他的工作需要这样做：“在某种程度上，人们想要感受到的是领导他们的人看到了他们最好的一面，”他告诉我。

But I found it interesting that that optimism does not extend to the possibility of the public’s accepting wisdoms—such as the moral logic of reparations—that the president, by his own account, has accepted for himself and is willing to teach his children.

但我发现有趣的是，这种乐观情绪并没有延伸到公众接受智慧的可能性——比如赔偿的道德逻辑——而总统根据他自己的说法，已经为自己接受了这些智慧，并且愿意教导他的孩子们。

Obama says he always tells his staff that “better is good.” The notion that a president would attempt to achieve change within the boundaries of the accepted consensus is appropriate.

奥巴马说，他总是告诉他的工作人员“更好就是好”。总统试图在公认共识的范围内实现变革的想法是适当的。

But Obama is almost constitutionally skeptical of those who seek to achieve change outside that consensus.

但奥巴马几乎从本质上对那些寻求在共识之外实现变革的人持怀疑态度。

Obama visited North Carolina A&T State University in early October for a conversation about My Brother’s Keeper, his initiative for disadvantaged youth.

奥巴马于 10 月初访问了北卡罗来纳州 A&T 州立大学，并就“我兄弟的守护者”（My Brother’s Keeper）进行了对话，这是他针对弱势青少年的倡议。

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Early in 2016, Obama invited a group of African American leaders to meet with him at the White House.

（Chip Somodevilla / Getty）2016 年初，奥巴马邀请一群非裔美国领导人在白宫与他会面。

When some of the activists affiliated with Black Lives Matter refused to attend, Obama began calling them out in speeches.

当一些“黑人生命也是命”活动人士拒绝出席时，奥巴马开始在演讲中谴责他们。

“You can’t refuse to meet because that might compromise the purity of your position,” he said.

“你不能拒绝会面，因为这可能会损害你立场的纯洁性，”他说。

“The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room, and then start trying to figure out how is this problem going to be solved.

“社会运动和行动主义的价值在于让你坐到谈判桌前，进入房间，然后开始尝试找出如何解决这个问题。

You then have a responsibility to prepare an agenda that is achievable—that can institutionalize the changes you seek—and to engage the other side.”

然后，你有责任准备一个可实现的议程——可以将你寻求的变革制度化——并与另一方接触。”

Opal Tometi, a Nigerian American community activist who is one of the three founders of Black Lives Matter, explained to me that the group has a more diffuse structure than most civil-rights organizations.

奥帕尔·托梅蒂 (Opal Tometi) 是一名尼日利亚裔美国社区活动家，也是“黑人生命也是命”的三位创始人之一，他向我解释说，该组织的结构比大多数民权组织更加分散。

One reason for this is to avoid the cult of personality that has plagued black organizations in the past.

这样做的原因之一是为了避免过去困扰黑人组织的个人崇拜。

So the founders asked its membership in Chicago, the president’s hometown, whether they should meet with Obama.

因此，创始人询问其在总统家乡芝加哥的会员是否应该与奥巴马会面。

“They felt—and I think many of our members felt—there wouldn’t be the depth of discussion that they wanted to have,” Tometi told me.

“他们觉得——我想我们的许多成员也觉得——不会有他们想要的深度讨论，”托梅蒂告诉我。

“And if there wasn’t that space to have a real heart-to-heart, and if it was just surface level, that it would be more of a disservice to the movement.”

“如果没有足够的空间进行真正的心与心交流，如果只是表面层面的交流，那将对运动造成更大的伤害。”

Tometi noted that some other activists allied with Black Lives Matter had been planning to attend the meeting, so they felt their views would be represented.

托梅蒂指出，其他一些与“黑人生命也是命”结盟的活动人士也计划参加这次会议，因此他们认为自己的观点会得到代表。

Nevertheless, Black Lives Matter sees itself as engaged in a protest against the treatment of black people by the American state, and so Tometi and much of the group’s leadership, concerned about being used for a photo op by the very body they were protesting, opted not to go.

尽管如此，“黑人生命也是命”组织认为自己正在抗议美国政府对待黑人的方式，因此托梅蒂和该组织的大部分领导层担心被他们所抗议的身体用来拍照，所以选择不去。

When I asked Obama about this perspective, he fluctuated between understanding where the activists were coming from and being hurt by such brush-offs.

当我向奥巴马询问这一观点时，他在理解活动人士的来源和受到此类拒绝的伤害之间摇摆不定。

“I think that where I’ve gotten frustrated during the course of my presidency has never been because I was getting pushed too hard by activists to see the justness of a cause or the essence of an issue,” he said.

他说：“我认为，在我担任总统期间，我感到沮丧的地方从来都不是因为活动人士逼迫我看清某个事业的正义性或问题的本质。”

“I think where I got frustrated at times was the belief that the president can do anything if he just decides he wants to do it.

“我认为，有时让我感到沮丧的地方是，我相信总统只要决定想做就可以做任何事情。

And that sort of lack of awareness on the part of an activist about the constraints of our political system and the constraints on this office, I think, sometimes would leave me to mutter under my breath.

我认为，一位积极分子对我们政治制度的限制和这个办公室的限制缺乏认识，有时会让我低声嘀咕。

Very rarely did I lose it publicly.

我很少公开失去它。

Usually I’d just smile.”

通常我只是微笑。”

He laughed, then continued, “The reason I say that is because those are the times where sometimes you feel actually a little bit hurt.

他笑了，然后继续说道：“我之所以这么说，是因为有时候你会觉得其实有点受伤。

Because you feel like saying to these folks, ‘[Don’t] you think if I could do it, I [would] have just done it?

因为你想对这些人说，‘你不认为如果我能做到的话，我就会这么做吗？

Do you think that the only problem is that I don’t care enough about the plight of poor people, or gay people?’ ”

你认为唯一的问题是我不够关心穷人或同性恋者的困境吗？’”

I asked Obama whether he thought that perhaps protesters’ distrust of the powers that be could ultimately be healthy.

我问奥巴马，他是否认为抗议者对权力的不信任最终可能是健康的。

“Yes,” he said.

“是的，”他说。

“Which is why I don’t get too hurt.

“这就是为什么我没有受到太大伤害。

I mean, I think there is a benefit to wanting to hold power’s feet to the fire until you actually see the goods.

我的意思是，我认为在你真正看到货物之前，想要让权力的脚踩在火上是有好处的。

I get that.

我明白了。

And I think it is important.

我认为这很重要。

And frankly, sometimes it’s useful for activists just to be out there to keep you mindful and not get complacent, even if ultimately you think some of their criticism is misguided.”

坦率地说，有时，活动人士站出来让你保持警惕，不要自满，这是很有用的，即使最终你认为他们的一些批评是错误的。”

Obama himself was an activist and a community organizer, albeit for only two years—but he is not, by temperament, a protester.

奥巴马本人是一名活动家和社区组织者，尽管只任职两年，但就性格而言，他并不是抗议者。

He is a consensus-builder; consensus, he believes, ultimately drives what gets done.

他是共识的缔造者；他相信，共识最终会推动事情的进展。

He understands the emotional power of protest, the need to vent before authority—but that kind of approach does not come naturally to him.

他了解抗议的情感力量，了解在权威面前发泄的需要，但这种方法对他来说并不自然。

Regarding reparations, he said, “Sometimes I wonder how much of these debates have to do with the desire, the legitimate desire, for that history to be recognized.

关于赔偿，他说：“有时我想知道这些辩论有多少与承认那段历史的愿望、合理的愿望有关。

Because there is a psychic power to the recognition that is not satisfied with a universal program; it’s not satisfied by the Affordable Care Act, or an expansion of Pell Grants, or an expansion of the earned-income tax credit.” These kinds of programs, effective and disproportionately beneficial to black people though they may be, don’t “speak to the hurt, and the sense of injustice, and the self-doubt that arises out of the fact that [African Americans] are behind now, and it makes us sometimes feel as if there must be something wrong with us—unless you’re able to see the history and say, ‘It’s amazing we got this far given what we went through.’

因为有一种精神力量可以认识到不满足于通用程序； 《平价医疗法案》、佩尔助学金的扩大或劳动所得税抵免的扩大都不能满足这一要求。”这些项目虽然可能对黑人有效且特别有利，但它们并不能“诉诸伤害、不公正感以及因[非裔美国人]现在落后这一事实而产生的自我怀疑，这有时让我们觉得我们一定出了什么问题——除非你能够看到历史并说，‘考虑到我们所经历的一切，我们能走到这一步真是太令人惊讶了。’”

“So in part, I think the argument sometimes that I’ve had with folks who are much more interested in sort of race-specific programs is less an argument about what is practically achievable and sometimes maybe more an argument of ‘We want society to see what’s happened and internalize it and answer it in demonstrable ways.’ And those impulses I very much understand—but my hope would be that as we’re moving through the world right now, we’re able to get that psychological or emotional peace by seeing very concretely our kids doing better and being more hopeful and having greater opportunities.”

“因此，在某种程度上，我认为有时我与那些对特定种族计划更感兴趣的人之间的争论不是关于什么是实际可实现的，有时可能更多是关于‘我们希望社会看到发生了什么并将其内化并以明显的方式回答它’的争论。我非常理解这些冲动，但我希望当我们现在在这个世界上前进时，我们能够通过非常具体地看待我们的孩子来获得心理或情感上的平静。做得更好，更有希望，拥有更多机会。”

Obama saw—at least at that moment, before the election of Donald Trump—a straight path to that world.

至少在唐纳德·特朗普当选之前的那一刻，奥巴马看到了通往那个世界的直接道路。

“Just play this out as a thought experiment,” he said.

“只需将其作为一个思想实验来进行，”他说。

“Imagine if you had genuine, high-quality early-childhood education for every child, and suddenly every black child in America—but also every poor white child or Latino [child], but just stick with every black child in America—is getting a really good education.

“想象一下，如果你为每个孩子提供真正的、高质量的幼儿教育，突然之间，美国的每个黑人孩子——还有每个贫穷的白人孩子或拉丁裔孩子，但只要坚持美国的每个黑人孩子——都得到了真正良好的教育。

And they’re graduating from high school at the same rates that whites are, and they are going to college at the same rates that whites are, and they are able to afford college at the same rates because the government has universal programs that say that you’re not going to be barred from school just because of how much money your parents have.

他们高中毕业的比例与白人相同，他们上大学的比例也与白人相同，他们能够以相同的比例上大学，因为政府有通用计划，规定你不会因为父母有多少钱而被禁止上学。

“So now they’re all graduating.

“所以现在他们都毕业了。

And let’s also say that the Justice Department and the courts are making sure, as I’ve said in a speech before, that when Jamal sends his résumé in, he’s getting treated the same as when Johnny sends his résumé in.

我们还要说，正如我之前在演讲中所说，司法部和法院正在确保当贾马尔发送简历时，他会得到与约翰尼发送简历时相同的待遇。

Now, are we going to have suddenly the same number of CEOs, billionaires, etc., as the white community?

现在，我们是否会突然拥有与白人社区相同数量的首席执行官、亿万富翁等？

In 10 years?

10年后？

Probably not, maybe not even in 20 years.

可能不会，甚至20年后也可能不会。

“But I guarantee you that we would be thriving, we would be succeeding.

“但我向你保证，我们会蓬勃发展，我们会成功。

We wouldn’t have huge numbers of young African American men in jail.

我们不会让大量年轻的非裔美国男子入狱。

We’d have more family formation as college-graduated girls are meeting boys who are their peers, which then in turn means the next generation of kids are growing up that much better.

当大学毕业的女孩遇到同龄男孩时，我们会有更多的家庭组建，这反过来意味着下一代孩子会成长得更好。

And suddenly you’ve got a whole generation that’s in a position to start using the incredible creativity that we see in music, and sports, and frankly even on the streets, channeled into starting all kinds of businesses.

突然间，整整一代人都能够开始利用我们在音乐、体育、坦率地说甚至在街头看到的令人难以置信的创造力来创办各种企业。

I feel pretty good about our odds in that situation.”

我对我们在这种情况下的胜算感到非常满意。”

The thought experiment doesn’t hold up.

思想实验站不住脚。

The programs Obama favored would advance white America too—and without a specific commitment to equality, there is no guarantee that the programs would eschew discrimination.

奥巴马支持的计划也将促进美国白人的发展——如果没有对平等的具体承诺，就不能保证这些计划会避免歧视。

Obama’s solution relies on a goodwill that his own personal history tells him exists in the larger country.

奥巴马的解决方案依赖于他个人历史告诉他的更大国家中存在的善意。

My own history tells me something different.

我自己的历史告诉我一些不同的事情。

The large numbers of black men in jail, for instance, are not just the result of poor policy, but of not seeing those men as human.

例如，大量黑人入狱不仅是政策不善的结果，也是因为没有将这些人视为人。

When President Obama and I had this conversation, the target he was aiming to reach seemed to me to be many generations away, and now—as President-Elect Trump prepares for office—seems even many more generations off.

当奥巴马总统和我进行这次谈话时，在我看来，他要达到的目标似乎还需要好几代人才能实现，而现在，当当选总统特朗普准备就职时，似乎还需要好几代人才能实现。

Obama’s accomplishments were real: a $1 billion settlement on behalf of black farmers, a Justice Department that exposed Ferguson’s municipal plunder, the increased availability of Pell Grants (and their availability to some prisoners), and the slashing of the crack/cocaine disparity in sentencing guidelines, to name just a few.

奥巴马的成就是真实的：代表黑人农民达成 10 亿美元的和解协议、司法部揭露弗格森的市政掠夺行为、增加佩尔助学金的可用性（以及向某些囚犯提供的资助），以及在量刑指南中缩小快克/可卡因的差异，仅举几例。

Obama was also the first sitting president to visit a federal prison.

奥巴马也是第一位参观联邦监狱的在任总统。

There was a feeling that he’d erected a foundation upon which further progressive policy could be built.

人们有一种感觉，他已经为进一步的进步政策奠定了基础。

It’s tempting to say that foundation is now endangered.

人们很容易说基金会现在受到了威胁。

The truth is, it was never safe.

事实是，它从来都不安全。

Obama’s greatest misstep was born directly out of his greatest insight.

奥巴马最大的失误直接源于他最伟大的洞察力。

Only Obama, a black man who emerged from the best of white America, and thus could sincerely trust white America, could be so certain that he could achieve broad national appeal.

只有奥巴马，一个出身于美国最优秀白人群体的黑人，因此能够真诚地信任美国白人，才能如此确信自己能够获得广泛的全国吸引力。

And yet only a black man with that same biography could underestimate his opposition’s resolve to destroy him.

然而，只有拥有相同传记的黑人才能低估他的反对派摧毁他的决心。

In some sense an Obama presidency could never have succeeded along the normal presidential lines; he needed a partner, or partners, in Congress who could put governance above party.

从某种意义上说，按照正常的总统路线，奥巴马的总统任期永远不可能取得成功。他在国会需要一个或多个能够将治理置于政党之上的合作伙伴。

But he struggled to win over even some of his own allies.

但他甚至很难赢得自己的一些盟友。

Ben Nelson, the Democratic senator from Nebraska whom Obama helped elect, became an obstacle to health-care reform.

奥巴马帮助当选的内布拉斯加州民主党参议员本·尼尔森成为医疗改革的障碍。

Joe Lieberman, whom Obama saved from retribution at the hands of Senate Democrats after Lieberman campaigned for Obama’s 2008 opponent, John McCain, similarly obstructed Obamacare.

乔·利伯曼 (Joe Lieberman) 在 2008 年为奥巴马的对手约翰·麦凯恩 (John McCain) 竞选后，被奥巴马拯救，免遭参议院民主党人的报复，他也同样阻碍了奥巴马医改。

Among Republicans, senators who had seemed amenable to Obama’s agenda—Chuck Grassley, Susan Collins, Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe—rebuffed him repeatedly.

在共和党人中，那些看似愿意接受奥巴马议程的参议员——查克·格拉斯利、苏珊·柯林斯、理查德·卢格、奥林匹亚·斯诺——一再拒绝他。

The obstruction grew out of narrow political incentives.

这种阻碍源于狭隘的政治动机。

“If Republicans didn’t cooperate,” Obama told me, “and there was not a portrait of bipartisan cooperation and a functional federal government, then the party in power would pay the price and they could win back the Senate and/or the House.

“如果共和党人不合作，”奥巴马告诉我，“而且没有两党合作和有效运作的联邦政府，那么执政党就会付出代价，他们就能赢回参议院和/或众议院。

That wasn’t an inaccurate political calculation.”

这并不是一个不准确的政治算计。”

Obama is not sure of the degree to which individual racism played into this calculation.

奥巴马不确定个人种族主义在多大程度上影响了这一计算。

“I do remember watching Bill Clinton get impeached and Hillary Clinton being accused of killing Vince Foster,” he said.

“我确实记得看到比尔·克林顿被弹劾，希拉里·克林顿被指控杀害文斯·福斯特，”他说。

“And if you ask them, I’m sure they would say, ‘No, actually what you’re experiencing is not because you’re black, it’s because you’re a Democrat.’ ”

“如果你问他们，我相信他们会说，‘不，实际上你所经历的并不是因为你是黑人，而是因为你是民主党人。’”

But personal animus is just one manifestation of racism; arguably the more profound animosity occurs at the level of interests.

但个人敌意只是种族主义的一种表现。可以说，更深刻的敌意发生在利益层面。

The most recent Congress boasted 138 members from the states that comprised the old Confederacy.

最近一届国会拥有来自旧联邦各州的 138 名议员。

Of the 101 Republicans in that group, 96 are white and one is black.

该群体的 101 名共和党人中，96 名是白人，1 名是黑人。

Of the 37 Democrats, 18 are black and 15 are white.

37 名民主党人中，18 名黑人，15 名白人。

There are no white congressional Democrats in the Deep South.

南方腹地没有白人国会民主党人。

Exit polls in Mississippi in 2008 found that 96 percent of voters who described themselves as Republicans were white.

2008 年密西西比州的出口民意调查发现，自称共和党的选民中有 96% 是白人。

The Republican Party is not simply the party of whites, but the preferred party of whites who identify their interest as defending the historical privileges of whiteness.

共和党不仅仅是白人的政党，而且是白人的首选政党，他们将捍卫白人的历史特权视为自己的利益。

The researchers Josh Pasek, Jon A.

研究人员 Josh Pasek、Jon A.

Krosnick, and Trevor Tompson found that in 2012, 32 percent of Democrats held antiblack views, while 79 percent of Republicans did.

Krosnick 和 Trevor Tompson 发现，2012 年，32% 的民主党人持有反黑人观点，而 79% 的共和党人持有反黑人观点。

These attitudes could even spill over to white Democratic politicians, because they are seen as representing the party of blacks.

这些态度甚至可能蔓延到白人民主党政客身上，因为他们被视为代表黑人政党。

Studying the 2016 election, the political scientist Philip Klinkner found that the most predictive question for understanding whether a voter favored Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump was “Is Barack Obama a Muslim?”

政治学家菲利普·克林克纳 (Philip Klinkner) 在研究 2016 年大选时发现，要了解选民是否支持希拉里·克林顿 (Hillary Clinton) 还是唐纳德·特朗普 (Donald Trump)，最具预测性的问题是“巴拉克·奥巴马 (Barack Obama) 是穆斯林吗？”

In our conversations, Obama said he didn’t doubt that there was a sincerely nonracist states’-rights contingent of the GOP.

在我们的谈话中，奥巴马表示，他毫不怀疑共和党中有一支真诚的非种族主义国家权利队伍。

And yet he suspected that there might be more to it.

但他怀疑可能还有更多原因。

“A rudimentary knowledge of American history tells you that the relationship between the federal government and the states was very much mixed up with attitudes towards slavery, attitudes towards Jim Crow, attitudes towards antipoverty programs and who benefited and who didn’t,” he said.

“对美国历史的基本了解告诉你，联邦政府和各州之间的关系与对奴隶制的态度、对吉姆·克劳的态度、对反贫困计划的态度以及谁受益和谁没有受益的态度非常复杂，”他说。

“And so I’m careful not to attribute any particular resistance or slight or opposition to race.

“所以我很小心，不要将任何特定的抵抗、轻视或反对归因于种族。

But what I do believe is that if somebody didn’t have a problem with their daddy being employed by the federal government, and didn’t have a problem with the Tennessee Valley Authority electrifying certain communities, and didn’t have a problem with the interstate highway system being built, and didn’t have a problem with the GI Bill, and didn’t have a problem with the [Federal Housing Administration] subsidizing the suburbanization of America, and that all helped you build wealth and create a middle class—and then suddenly as soon as African Americans or Latinos are interested in availing themselves of those same mechanisms as ladders into the middle class, you now have a violent opposition to them—then I think you at least have to ask yourself the question of how consistent you are, and what’s different, and what’s changed.”

但我确实相信，如果有人对他们的父亲受联邦政府雇用没有问题，对田纳西河谷管理局为某些社区供电没有问题，对正在建设的州际公路系统没有问题，对《退伍军人权利法案》没有问题，对[联邦住房管理局]补贴美国郊区化没有问题，所有这些都帮助你积累了财富并创造了中产阶级——然后，一旦非裔美国人或拉丁裔有兴趣利用这些相同的机制作为进入中产阶级的阶梯，你现在就会强烈反对他们——那么我认为你至少必须问自己一个问题：你的一致性如何，有什么不同，以及发生了什么变化。”

Racism greeted Obama in both his primary and general-election campaigns in 2008.

奥巴马在 2008 年的初选和大选中都遭遇了种族主义。

Photos were circulated of him in Somali garb.

他穿着索马里服装的照片流传开来。

Rush Limbaugh dubbed him “Barack the Magic Negro.” Roger Stone, who would go on to advise the Trump campaign, claimed that Michelle Obama could be heard on tape yelling “Whitey.” Detractors circulated emails claiming that the future first lady had written a racist senior thesis while at Princeton.

拉什·林博称他为“神奇黑人巴拉克”。罗杰·斯通（Roger Stone）后来成为特朗普竞选团队的顾问，他声称可以在录音中听到米歇尔·奥巴马大喊“Whitey”。批评者散布电子邮件，声称未来的第一夫人在普林斯顿大学期间写了一篇种族主义的高级论文。

A fifth of all West Virginia Democratic-primary voters in 2008 openly admitted that race had influenced their vote.

2008 年，西弗吉尼亚州民主党初选选民中有五分之一公开承认种族影响了他们的投票。

Hillary Clinton trounced him 67 to 26 percent.

希拉里·克林顿 (Hillary Clinton) 以 67% 比 26% 的支持率击败了他。

After Obama won the presidency in defiance of these racial headwinds, traffic to the white-supremacist website Stormfront increased sixfold.

奥巴马克服这些种族阻力赢得总统职位后，白人至上主义网站 Stormfront 的流量增加了六倍。

Before the election, in August, just before the Democratic National Convention, the FBI uncovered an assassination plot hatched by white supremacists in Denver.

八月大选前，就在民主党全国代表大会召开之前，联邦调查局揭露了丹佛白人至上主义者策划的暗杀阴谋。

Mainstream conservative publications floated the notion that Obama’s memoir was too “stylish and penetrating” to have been written by the candidate, and found a plausible ghostwriter in the radical (and white) former Weatherman Bill Ayers.

主流保守派出版物提出这样的观点，即奥巴马的回忆录太“时尚且具有洞察力”，不可能是由候选人撰写的，并在激进的（白人）前天气预报员比尔·艾尔斯（Bill Ayers）中找到了一位看似合理的代笔人。

A Republican women’s club in California dispensed “Obama Bucks” featuring slices of watermelon, ribs, and fried chicken.

加利福尼亚州的一个共和党妇女俱乐部分发了“奥巴马雄鹿”，其中包括西瓜片、排骨和炸鸡。

At the Values Voter Summit that year, conventioneers hawked “Obama Waffles,” a waffle mix whose box featured a bug-eyed caricature of the candidate.

当年的价值观选民峰会上，与会者兜售“奥巴马华夫饼”，这是一种华夫饼混合物，盒子上印有这位候选人的大眼睛漫画。

Fake hip-hop lyrics were scrawled on the side (“Barry’s Bling Bling Waffle Ring”) and on the top, the same caricature was granted a turban and tagged with the instructions “Point box toward Mecca for tastier waffles.” The display was denounced by the summit’s sponsor, the Family Research Council.

假嘻哈歌词被潦草地写在侧面（“巴里的金光闪闪的华夫饼戒指”），而在顶部，同样的漫画被授予头巾，并标有说明“指向麦加的点盒子，以获得更美味的华夫饼”。这一展示遭到了峰会主办方家庭研究委员会的谴责。

One would be forgiven for meeting this denunciation with guffaws: The council’s president, Tony Perkins, had once addressed the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens with a Confederate flag draped behind him.

人们以大笑来回应这种谴责是情有可原的：该委员会主席托尼·珀金斯(Tony Perkins)有一次向白人至上主义的保守党公民委员会发表讲话，身后披着一面南方邦联旗帜。

By 2015, Perkins had deemed the debate over Obama’s birth certificate “legitimate” and was saying that it “makes sense” to conclude that Obama was actually a Muslim.

到 2015 年，帕金斯认为关于奥巴马出生证明的争论是“合法的”，并表示得出奥巴马实际上是穆斯林的结论是“有道理的”。

By then, birtherism—inflamed in large part by a real-estate mogul and reality-TV star named Donald Trump—had overtaken the Republican rank and file.

那时，出生论——很大程度上是由一位名叫唐纳德·特朗普的房地产大亨和电视真人秀明星煽动的——已经席卷了共和党普通民众。

In 2015, one poll found that 54 percent of GOP voters thought Obama was a Muslim.

2015年，一项民意调查发现，54%的共和党选民认为奥巴马是穆斯林。

Only 29 percent believed he’d been born in America.

只有 29% 的人相信他出生在美国。

Still, in 2008, Obama had been elected.

尽管如此，2008年，奥巴马还是当选了。

His supporters rejoiced.

他的支持者欣喜若狂。

As Jay-Z commemorated the occasion:

Jay-Z 纪念这一时刻时说道：

Not quite.

不完全是。

A month after Obama entered the White House, a CNBC personality named Rick Santelli took to the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and denounced the president’s efforts to help homeowners endangered by the housing crisis.

奥巴马入主白宫一个月后，CNBC 名人里克·桑泰利 (Rick Santelli) 走上芝加哥商品交易所交易大厅，谴责总统为帮助受住房危机困扰的房主所做的努力。

“How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?,” Santelli asked the assembled traders.

“你们中有多少人想为邻居的抵押贷款支付额外的浴室却无法支付账单？”桑泰利向聚集在一起的交易员问道。

He asserted that Obama should “reward people that could carry the water” as opposed to those who “drink the water,” and denounced those in danger of foreclosure as “losers.” Race was implicit in Santelli’s harangue—the housing crisis and predatory lending had devastated black communities and expanded the wealth gap—and it culminated with a call for a “Tea Party” to resist the Obama presidency.

他声称奥巴马应该“奖励那些能够运水的人”，而不是那些“喝水”的人，并谴责那些面临丧失抵押品赎回权危险的人是“失败者”。桑泰利的长篇大论中隐含着种族问题——住房危机和掠夺性贷款摧毁了黑人社区，扩大了贫富差距——最终呼吁成立“茶党”来抵制奥巴马总统。

In fact, right-wing ideologues had been planning just such a resistance for decades.

事实上，右翼思想家几十年来一直在计划这样的抵抗。

They would eagerly answer Santelli’s call.

他们会热切地响应桑泰利的号召。

One of the intellectual forerunners of the Tea Party is said to be Ron Paul, the heterodox two-time Republican presidential candidate, who opposed the war in Iraq and championed civil liberties.

据说茶党的知识分子先驱之一是罗恩·保罗（Ron Paul），这位非正统的两届共和党总统候选人反对伊拉克战争并倡导公民自由。

On other matters, Paul was more traditional.

在其他问题上，保罗则更为传统。

Throughout the ’90s, he published a series of racist newsletters that referred to New York City as “Welfaria,” called Martin Luther King Jr. Day “Hate Whitey Day,” and asserted that 95 percent of black males in Washington, D.C., were either “semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” Paul’s apologists have claimed that he had no real connection to the newsletters, even though virtually all of them were published in his name (“The Ron Paul Survival Report,” “Ron Paul Political Report,” “Dr. Ron Paul’s Freedom Report”) and written in his voice.

整个 90 年代，他出版了一系列种族主义时事通讯，将纽约市称为“福利利亚”，将马丁·路德·金日称为“仇恨白人日”，并声称华盛顿特区 95% 的黑人男性要么是“半犯罪的，要么完全是犯罪的”。保罗的辩护者声称，他与这些时事通讯没有真正的联系，尽管几乎所有时事通讯都是以他的名义出版的（“罗恩·保罗生存报告”、“罗恩·保罗政治报告”、“罗恩·保罗博士的自由报告”）并以他的声音撰写。

Either way, the views of the newsletters have found their expression in his ideological comrades.

不管怎样，时事通讯的观点已经在他的意识形态同志中得到了表达。

Throughout Obama’s first term, Tea Party activists voiced their complaints in racist terms.

在奥巴马的第一个任期内，茶党活动人士用种族主义术语表达了他们的抱怨。

Activists brandished signs warning that Obama would implement “white slavery,” waved the Confederate flag, depicted Obama as a witch doctor, and issued calls for him to “go back to Kenya.” Tea Party supporters wrote “satirical” letters in the name of “We Colored People” and stoked the flames of birtherism.

活动人士挥舞标语，警告奥巴马将实施“白人奴隶制”，挥舞邦联旗帜，将奥巴马描绘成巫医，并呼吁他“滚回肯尼亚”。茶党支持者以“我们有色人种”的名义写了“讽刺”信件，煽动出生论的火焰。

One of the Tea Party’s most prominent sympathizers, the radio host Laura Ingraham, wrote a racist tract depicting Michelle Obama gorging herself on ribs, while Glenn Beck said the president was a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” The Tea Party’s leading exponent, Andrew Breitbart, engineered the smearing of Shirley Sherrod, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s director of rural development for Georgia, publishing egregiously misleading videos that wrongly made her appear to be engaging in antiwhite racist invective, which led to her dismissal.

茶党最著名的同情者之一、电台主持人劳拉·英格拉汉姆（Laura Ingraham）写了一篇种族主义小册子，描绘米歇尔·奥巴马（Michelle Obama）狼吞虎咽地吃排骨，而格伦·贝克（Glenn Beck）则表示总统是一个“种族主义者”，“对白人有着根深蒂固的仇恨”。茶党的主要支持者安德鲁·布莱巴特策划抹黑美国农业部佐治亚州农村发展主任雪莉·谢罗德，发布了极具误导性的视频，错误地让她看起来在进行反白人种族主义谩骂，最终导致她被解雇。

(In a rare act of cowardice, the Obama administration cravenly submitted to this effort.)

（奥巴马政府胆怯地屈服于这一努力，这是一种罕见的怯懦行为。）

In those rare moments when Obama made any sort of comment attacking racism, firestorms threatened to consume his governing agenda.

在奥巴马罕见地发表任何攻击种族主义的言论时，风暴可能会摧毁他的执政议程。

When, in July 2009, the president objected to the arrest of the eminent Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. while he was trying to get into his own house, pointing out that the officer had “acted stupidly,” a third of whites said the remark made them feel less favorably toward the president, and nearly two-thirds claimed that Obama had “acted stupidly” by commenting.

2009 年 7 月，当著名哈佛大学教授小亨利·路易斯·盖茨 (Henry Louis Gates Jr.) 试图进入自己的家时，总统反对逮捕他，并指出该警官“行为愚蠢”，三分之一的白人表示，这句话让他们对总统的态度不太好，近三分之二的人声称奥巴马的评论“行为愚蠢”。

A chastened Obama then determined to make sure his public statements on race were no longer mere riffs but designed to have an achievable effect.

受到惩罚的奥巴马随后决定确保他关于种族问题的公开声明不再只是即兴发挥，而是旨在产生可实现的效果。

This was smart, but still the invective came.

这很聪明，但谩骂还是来了。

During Obama’s 2009 address on health care before a joint session of Congress, Joe Wilson, a Republican congressman from South Carolina, incredibly, and in defiance of precedent and decorum, disrupted the proceedings by crying out “You lie!” A Missouri congressman equated Obama with a monkey.

2009 年，奥巴马在国会联席会议上就医疗保健问题发表讲话时，来自南卡罗来纳州的共和党议员乔·威尔逊 (Joe Wilson) 令人难以置信地无视先例和礼节，大喊“你撒谎！”，扰乱了会议进程。密苏里州的一位国会议员将奥巴马比作一只猴子。

A California GOP official took up the theme and emailed her friends an image depicting Obama as a chimp, with the accompanying text explaining, “Now you know why [there’s] no birth certificate!” Former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin assessed the president’s foreign policy as a “shuck and jive shtick.” Newt Gingrich dubbed him the “food-stamp president.” The rhetorical attacks on Obama were matched by a very real attack on his political base—in 2011 and 2012, 19 states enacted voting restrictions that made it harder for African Americans to vote.

加州共和党官员抓住了这个主题，并通过电子邮件向她的朋友发送了一张将奥巴马描绘成黑猩猩的图片，并附有文字解释说：“现在你知道为什么没有出生证明了吧！”前副总统候选人莎拉·佩林评价总统的外交政策是“胡言乱语”。纽特·金里奇称他为“食品券总统”。在对奥巴马进行口头攻击的同时，他的政治基础也受到了真正的攻击——2011 年和 2012 年，19 个州颁布了投票限制，使非裔美国人更难投票。

Yet in 2012, as in 2008, Obama won anyway.

然而，2012 年和 2008 年一样，奥巴马还是赢了。

Prior to the election, Obama, ever the optimist, had claimed that intransigent Republicans would decide to work with him to advance the country.

选举前，一向乐观的奥巴马曾声称，顽固的共和党人将决定与他合作，推动国家进步。

No such collaboration was in the offing.

此类合作并没有即将到来。

Instead, legislation ground to a halt and familiar themes resurfaced.

相反，立法陷入停滞，熟悉的主题重新出现。

An Idaho GOP official posted a photo on Facebook depicting a trap waiting for Obama.

爱达荷州共和党官员在脸书上发布了一张照片，描绘了等待奥巴马的陷阱。

The bait was a slice of watermelon.

诱饵是一片西瓜。

The caption read, “Breaking: The secret service just uncovered a plot to kidnap the president.

标题写道：“突发事件：特勤局刚刚发现了一起绑架总统的阴谋。

More details as we get them …” In 2014, conservatives assembled in support of Cliven Bundy’s armed protest against federal grazing fees.

我们得到更多细节……”2014 年，保守派集会支持克莱文·邦迪 (Cliven Bundy) 针对联邦放牧费的武装抗议。

As reporters descended on the Bundy ranch in Nevada, Bundy offered his opinions on “the Negro.” “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton,” Bundy explained.

当记者们来到内华达州的邦迪牧场时，邦迪发表了他对“黑人”的看法。 “他们堕胎，把年轻人关进监狱，因为他们从未学会如何采摘棉花，”邦迪解释道。

“And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy?

“我经常想，他们是当奴隶、采摘棉花、过家庭生活、做事会过得更好，还是在政府补贴下过得更好？

They didn’t get no more freedom.

他们没有再获得自由。

They got less freedom.”

他们的自由更少。”

That same year, in the wake of Michael Brown’s death, the Justice Department opened an investigation into the police department in Ferguson, Missouri.

同年，迈克尔·布朗去世后，司法部对密苏里州弗格森市警察局展开调查。

It found a city that, through racial profiling, arbitrary fines, and wanton harassment, had exploited law enforcement for the purposes of municipal plunder.

调查发现，这座城市通过种族定性、任意罚款和肆意骚扰，利用执法人员进行市政掠夺。

The plunder was sanctified by racist humor dispensed via internal emails among the police that later came to light.

警察内部电子邮件中散布的种族主义幽默使这次抢劫神圣化，后来曝光。

The president of the United States, who during his first year in office had reportedly received three times the number of death threats of any of his predecessors, was a repeat target.

据报道，美国总统在就职第一年收到的死亡威胁数量是其前任的三倍，因此他成为了反复攻击的目标。

Much ink has been spilled in an attempt to understand the Tea Party protests, and the 2016 presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, which ultimately emerged out of them.

为了理解茶党抗议活动以及最终从中脱颖而出的唐纳德·特朗普 (Donald Trump) 2016 年总统候选人资格，人们花费了大量的精力。

One theory popular among (primarily) white intellectuals of varying political persuasions held that this response was largely the discontented rumblings of a white working class threatened by the menace of globalization and crony capitalism.

一种在不同政治派别（主要是）白人知识分子中流行的理论认为，这种反应主要是受到全球化和裙带资本主义威胁的白人工人阶级的不满情绪。

Dismissing these rumblings as racism was said to condescend to this proletariat, which had long suffered the slings and arrows of coastal elites, heartless technocrats, and reformist snobs.

据说，将这些谣言斥为种族主义是对无产阶级的屈尊，他们长期遭受沿海精英、无情的技术官僚和改良主义势利小人的箭射。

Racism was not something to be coolly and empirically assessed but a slander upon the working man.

种族主义不是可以冷静地、凭经验地评估的东西，而是对工人的诽谤。

Deindustrialization, globalization, and broad income inequality are real.

去工业化、全球化和广泛的收入不平等是真实存在的。

And they have landed with at least as great a force upon black and Latino people in our country as upon white people.

他们对我国黑人和拉丁裔的影响力至少与对白人的影响力一样大。

And yet these groups were strangely unrepresented in this new populism.

然而奇怪的是，这些群体在这种新民粹主义中却没有代表。

Christopher S.

克里斯托弗·S。

Parker and Matt A.

帕克和马特 A.

Barreto, political scientists at the University of Washington and UCLA, respectively, have found a relatively strong relationship between racism and Tea Party membership.

华盛顿大学和加州大学洛杉矶分校的政治学家巴雷托分别发现种族主义与茶党成员身份之间存在相对较强的关系。

“Whites are less likely to be drawn to the Tea Party for material reasons, suggesting that, relative to other groups, it’s really more about social prestige,” they say.

他们说：“白人不太可能因为物质原因而被茶党吸引，这表明，相对于其他群体，茶党实际上更多的是社会声望。”

The notion that the Tea Party represented the righteous, if unfocused, anger of an aggrieved class allowed everyone from leftists to neoliberals to white nationalists to avoid a horrifying and simple reality: A significant swath of this country did not like the fact that their president was black, and that swath was not composed of those most damaged by an unquestioned faith in the markets.

茶党代表了一个受害阶级的正义愤怒，尽管没有重点，这一观念让从左翼分子到新自由主义者再到白人民族主义者的每个人都避免了一个可怕而简单的现实：这个国家的很大一部分人不喜欢他们的总统是黑人这一事实，而且这部分人并不是由那些因对市场的不容置疑的信仰而受到最严重损害的人组成的。

Far better to imagine the grievance put upon the president as the ghost of shambling factories and defunct union halls, as opposed to what it really was—a movement inaugurated by ardent and frightened white capitalists, raging from the commodities-trading floor of one of the great financial centers of the world.

最好将总统的不满想象为摇摇欲坠的工厂和废弃的工会大厅的幽灵，而不是它的真实面目——一场由热情而惊恐的白人资本家发起的运动，在世界主要金融中心之一的商品交易大厅肆虐。

That movement came into full bloom in the summer of 2015, with the candidacy of Donald Trump, a man who’d risen to political prominence by peddling the racist myth that the president was not American.

这场运动在 2015 年夏天随着唐纳德·特朗普 (Donald Trump) 的竞选而全面展开，这位通过宣扬总统不是美国人的种族主义神话而在政治上崭露头角的人。

It was birtherism—not trade, not jobs, not isolationism—that launched Trump’s foray into electoral politics.

特朗普涉足选举政治的正是出生论，而不是贸易、就业、孤立主义。

Having risen unexpectedly on this basis into the stratosphere of Republican politics, Trump spent the campaign freely and liberally trafficking in misogyny, Islamophobia, and xenophobia.

在此基础上，特朗普出人意料地跻身共和党政治的顶峰，并在整个竞选期间肆无忌惮地宣扬厌女症、伊斯兰恐惧症和仇外心理。

And on November 8, 2016, he won election to the presidency.

2016年11月8日，他赢得总统选举。

Historians will spend the next century analyzing how a country with such allegedly grand democratic traditions was, so swiftly and so easily, brought to the brink of fascism.

历史学家将在下个世纪分析一个据称拥有如此伟大民主传统的国家如何如此迅速、如此轻易地被推向法西斯主义的边缘。

But one needn’t stretch too far to conclude that an eight-year campaign of consistent and open racism aimed at the leader of the free world helped clear the way.

但我们不必太过分就可以得出这样的结论：针对自由世界领导人的长达八年的持续和公开的种族主义运动帮助扫清了道路。

“They rode the tiger.

“他们骑虎难下。

And now the tiger is eating them,” David Axelrod, speaking of the Republican Party, told me.

现在老虎正在吃掉他们，”大卫·阿克塞尔罗德在谈到共和党时告诉我。

That was in October.

那是在十月份。

His words proved too optimistic.

事实证明他的话过于乐观。

The tiger would devour us all.

老虎会吞噬我们所有人。

One Saturday morning last May, I joined the presidential motorcade as it slipped out of the southern gate of the White House.

去年五月的一个星期六早上，我加入了总统车队驶出白宫南门的行列。

A mostly white crowd had assembled.

聚集了一群以白人为主的人群。

As the motorcade drove by, people cheered, held up their smartphones to record the procession, and waved American flags.

当车队驶过时，人们欢呼雀跃，举起智能手机记录游行队伍，并挥舞美国国旗。

To be within feet of the president seemed like the thrill of their lives.

离总统只有几步之遥似乎是他们一生中最激动人心的事情。

I was astounded.

我很惊讶。

An old euphoria, which I could not immediately place, gathered up in me.

一种我无法立即定位的古老的欣快感在我身上聚集起来。

And then I remembered, it was what I felt through much of 2008, as I watched Barack Obama’s star shoot across the political sky.

然后我想起来，这就是我在 2008 年的大部分时间里看到巴拉克·奥巴马 (Barack Obama) 的明星划过政治天空时的感受。

I had never seen so many white people cheer on a black man who was neither an athlete nor an entertainer.

我从来没有见过这么多白人为一个既不是运动员也不是艺人的黑人欢呼。

And it seemed that they loved him for this, and I thought in those days, which now feel so long ago, that they might then love me, too, and love my wife, and love my child, and love us all in the manner that the God they so fervently cited had commanded.

他们似乎因此而爱他，我想，在那些日子里，现在感觉已经是很久以前的事了，他们也可能会爱我，爱我的妻子，爱我的孩子，爱我们所有人，就像他们如此热切地引用的上帝所命令的那样。

I had been raised amid a people who wanted badly to believe in the possibility of a Barack Obama, even as their very lives argued against that possibility.

我是在一群非常希望相信巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)的人中长大的，尽管他们的生活反对这种可能性。

So they would praise Martin Luther King Jr. in one breath and curse the white man, “the Great Deceiver,” in the next.

所以他们一口气称赞马丁·路德·金，然后又咒骂白人“大骗子”。

Then came Obama and the Obama family, and they were black and beautiful in all the ways we aspired to be, and all that love was showered upon them.

然后是奥巴马和奥巴马一家，他们都是黑人，而且美丽，符合我们所渴望的一切，所有的爱都倾注在他们身上。

But as Obama’s motorcade approached its destination—Howard University, where he would give the commencement address—the complexion of the crowd darkened, and I understood that the love was specific, that even if it allowed Barack Obama, even if it allowed the luckiest of us, to defy the boundaries, then the masses of us, in cities like this one, would still enjoy no such feat.

但当奥巴马的车队接近目的地——霍华德大学，他将在那里发表毕业典礼演讲——人群的脸色变暗了，我明白了这种爱是具体的，即使它允许巴拉克·奥巴马，即使它允许我们中最幸运的人挑战界限，那么，在像这样的城市里的我们大众，仍然无法享受这样的壮举。

We were launched into the Obama era with no notion of what to expect, if only because a black presidency had seemed such a dubious proposition.

我们进入了奥巴马时代，不知道会发生什么，哪怕只是因为黑人担任总统似乎是一个可疑的提议。

There was no preparation, because it would have meant preparing for the impossible.

没有任何准备，因为这意味着为不可能的事情做好准备。

There were few assessments of its potential import, because such assessments were regarded as speculative fiction.

对其潜在重要性的评估很少，因为此类评估被视为推测性小说。

In retrospect it all makes sense, and one can see a jagged but real political lineage running through black Chicago.

回想起来，这一切都是有道理的，人们可以看到一条参差不齐但真实的政治血统贯穿在黑人芝加哥。

It originates in Oscar Stanton De Priest; continues through Congressman William Dawson, who, under Roosevelt, switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party; crescendos with the legendary Harold Washington; rises still with Jesse Jackson’s 1988 victory in Michigan’s Democratic caucuses; rises again with Carol Moseley Braun’s triumph; and reaches its recent apex with the election of Barack Obama.

它起源于奥斯卡·斯坦顿·德·普里斯特 (Oscar Stanton De Priest)；继续通过国会议员威廉·道森，他在罗斯福的领导下从共和党转向民主党；与传奇人物哈罗德华盛顿一起渐强；随着杰西·杰克逊 (Jesse Jackson) 1988 年在密歇根州民主党党团会议中获胜，这一势头仍在上升；随着卡罗尔·莫斯利·布劳恩的胜利再次崛起；并随着巴拉克·奥巴马的当选而达到最近的顶峰。

If the lineage is apparent in hindsight, so are the limits of presidential power.

如果事后看来，血统是显而易见的，那么总统权力的限制也是如此。

For a century after emancipation, quasi-slavery haunted the South.

解放后的一个世纪里，准奴隶制一直困扰着南方。

And more than half a century after Brown v.

布朗诉案发生半个多世纪后。

Board of Education , schools throughout much of this country remain segregated.

教育委员会表示，该国大部分地区的学校仍然实行种族隔离。

There are no clean victories for black people, nor, perhaps, for any people.

黑人没有取得干净利落的胜利，或许也没有任何人能取得干净的胜利。

The presidency of Barack Obama is no different.

巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)的总统任期也不例外。

One can now say that an African American individual can rise to the same level as a white individual, and yet also say that the number of black individuals who actually qualify for that status will be small.

现在可以说，非裔美国人可以达到与白人相同的水平，但也可以说，真正有资格获得这一地位的黑人数量很少。

One thinks of Serena Williams, whose dominance and stunning achievements can’t, in and of themselves, ensure equal access to tennis facilities for young black girls.

人们会想到塞雷娜·威廉姆斯，她的统治地位和令人惊叹的成就本身并不能确保年轻的黑人女孩平等地使用网球设施。

The gate is open and yet so very far away.

大门敞开着，但距离却很远。

Obama campaigning in central Florida before the unthinkable—Donald Trump’s victory—happened (Ian Allen) I felt a mix of pride and amazement walking onto Howard’s campus that day.

在唐纳德·特朗普获胜这一不可思议的事情发生之前，奥巴马在佛罗里达州中部进行竞选活动（伊恩·艾伦）那天，当我走进霍华德的校园时，我感到既自豪又惊讶。

Howard alumni, of which I am one, are an obnoxious fraternity, known for yelling the school chant across city blocks, sneering at other historically black colleges and universities, and condescending to black graduates of predominantly white institutions.

霍华德校友（我就是其中之一）是一个令人讨厌的兄弟会，以在整个街区大喊学校口号、嘲笑其他历史悠久的黑人学院和大学以及居高临下地对待以白人为主的机构的黑人毕业生而闻名。

I like to think I am more reserved, but I felt an immense satisfaction in being in the library where I had once found my history, and now found myself with the first black president of the United States.

我喜欢认为自己比较保守，但在图书馆里我感到非常满足，我曾经在那里找到了我的历史，现在又发现自己与美国第一位黑人总统在一起。

It seemed providential that he would give the commencement address here in his last year.

他在最后一年在这里发表毕业典礼演讲似乎是天意。

The same pride I felt radiated out across the Yard, the large green patch in the main area of the campus where the ceremony would take place.

我感到同样的自豪感散布在庭院里，庭院里是举行仪式的校园主要区域的一大片绿地。

When Obama walked out, the audience exploded, and when the time came for the color guard to present arms, a chant arose: “O-Ba-Ma!

当奥巴马退场时，观众爆发了，当护旗队举起武器时，响起了口号：“欧巴马！

O-Ba-Ma!

欧巴马！

O-Ba-Ma!”

欧、爸、妈！”

He gave a good speech that day, paying heed to Howard’s rituals, calling out its famous alumni, shouting out the university’s various dormitories, and urging young people to vote.

那天他发表了一场精彩的演讲，关注霍华德的仪式，点名其著名校友，点名大学各个宿舍，并敦促年轻人投票。

(His usual riff on respectability politics was missing.) But I think he could have stood before that crowd, smiled, and said “Good luck,” and they would have loved him anyway.

（他通常对尊重政治的即兴表演消失了。）但我认为他可以站在人群面前微笑着说“祝你好运”，无论如何他们都会爱他的。

He was their champion, and this was evident in the smallest of things.

他是他们的冠军，这一点在最小的事情上就显而易见。

The national anthem was played first, but then came the black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” As the lyrics rang out over the crowd, the students held up the black-power fist—a symbol of defiance before power.

首先奏响国歌，然后是黑人国歌“举起每个声音并歌唱”。当歌词在人群中响起时，学生们举起了黑人权力的拳头——这是对权力的反抗的象征。

And yet here, in the face of a black man in his last year in power, it scanned not as a protest, but as a salute.

然而在这里，面对一位执政最后一年的黑人，这不是抗议，而是致敬。

Six months later the awful price of a black presidency would be known to those students, even as the country seemed determined not to acknowledge it.

六个月后，这些学生就会知道黑人总统的可怕代价，尽管这个国家似乎决心不承认这一点。

In the days after Donald Trump’s victory, there would be an insistence that something as “simple” as racism could not explain it.

在唐纳德·特朗普获胜后的几天里，有人坚持认为像种族主义这样“简单”的东西无法解释它。

As if enslavement had nothing to do with global economics, or as if lynchings said nothing about the idea of women as property.

仿佛奴役与全球经济无关，或者私刑似乎与妇女作为财产的观念无关。

As though the past 400 years could be reduced to the irrational resentment of full lips.

仿佛过去的四百年可以归结为满嘴的非理性怨恨。

No. Racism is never simple.

不。种族主义从来都不是简单的事情。

And there was nothing simple about what was coming, or about Obama, the man who had unwittingly summoned this future into being.

对于即将发生的事情，或者对于奥巴马，这个在不知不觉中召唤出这样的未来的人来说，一切都不简单。

It was said that the Americans who’d supported Trump were victims of liberal condescension.

据说支持特朗普的美国人是自由派屈尊俯就的受害者。

The word racist would be dismissed as a profane slur put upon the common man, as opposed to an accurate description of actual men.

种族主义这个词会被视为对普通人的亵渎诽谤，而不是对真实男人的准确描述。

“We simply don’t yet know how much racism or misogyny motivated Trump voters,” David Brooks would write in The New York Times .

“我们根本不知道种族主义或厌女症在多大程度上激发了特朗普选民的动机，”大卫·布鲁克斯在《纽约时报》上写道。

“If you were stuck in a jobless town, watching your friends OD on opiates, scrambling every month to pay the electric bill, and then along came a guy who seemed able to fix your problems and hear your voice, maybe you would stomach some ugliness, too.” This strikes me as perfectly logical.

“如果你被困在一个失业的小镇，看着你的朋友吸食鸦片，每个月都在忙着支付电费，然后出现了一个似乎能够解决你的问题并听到你的声音的人，也许你也会忍受一些丑陋。”我觉得这完全符合逻辑。

Indeed, it could apply just as well to Louis Farrakhan’s appeal to the black poor and working class.

事实上，这也同样适用于路易斯·法拉罕（Louis Farrakhan）对黑人穷人和工人阶级的吸引力。

But whereas the followers of an Islamophobic white nationalist enjoy the sympathy that must always greet the salt of the earth, the followers of an anti-Semitic black nationalist endure the scorn that must ever greet the children of the enslaved.

但是，仇视伊斯兰教的白人民族主义者的追随者享受着社会中坚人士必须始终受到的同情，而反犹太主义的黑人民族主义者的追随者则忍受着奴隶子女必须遭受的蔑视。

Much would be made of blue-collar voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan who’d pulled the lever for Obama in 2008 and 2012 and then for Trump in 2016.

威斯康星州、宾夕法尼亚州和密歇根州的蓝领选民在2008年和2012年拉动了奥巴马的杠杆，然后在2016年为特朗普拉动了杠杆。

Surely these voters disproved racism as an explanatory force.

当然，这些选民并不认为种族主义是一种解释力量。

It’s still not clear how many individual voters actually flipped.

目前尚不清楚有多少个人选民真正倒戈。

But the underlying presumption—that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could be swapped in for each other—exhibited a problem.

但潜在的假设——希拉里·克林顿和巴拉克·奥巴马可以互换——出现了问题。

Clinton was a candidate who’d won one competitive political race in her life, whose political instincts were questioned by her own advisers, who took more than half a million dollars in speaking fees from an investment bank because it was “what they offered,” who proposed to bring back to the White House a former president dogged by allegations of rape and sexual harassment.

克林顿是一位在她一生中赢得过一场竞争激烈的政治竞选的候选人，她的政治本能受到了她自己的顾问的质疑，她从一家投资银行收取了超过 50 万美元的演讲费，因为这是“他们提供的”，她提议将一位受到强奸和性骚扰指控困扰的前总统带回白宫。

Obama was a candidate who’d become only the third black senator in the modern era; who’d twice been elected president, each time flipping red and purple states; who’d run one of the most scandal-free administrations in recent memory.

奥巴马是一位候选人，他成为现代第三位黑人参议员。他两次当选总统，每次都翻转红色和紫色州；他所领导的政府是近年来最没有丑闻的政府之一。

Imagine an African American facsimile of Hillary Clinton: She would never be the nominee of a major political party and likely would not be in national politics at all.

想象一下希拉里·克林顿的非裔美国人翻版：她永远不会成为主要政党的提名人，而且很可能根本不会参与国家政治。

Pointing to citizens who voted for both Obama and Trump does not disprove racism; it evinces it.

指出同时投票给奥巴马和特朗普的公民并不能反驳种族主义；它证明了这一点。

To secure the White House, Obama needed to be a Harvard-trained lawyer with a decade of political experience and an incredible gift for speaking to cross sections of the country; Donald Trump needed only money and white bluster.

为了入主白宫，奥巴马需要成为一名受过哈佛训练的律师，拥有十年的政治经验和在全国各阶层发表演讲的令人难以置信的天赋；唐纳德·特朗普只需要金钱和白人咆哮。

In the week after the election, I was a mess.

选举后的一周，我一团糟。

I had not seen my wife in two weeks.

我已经两周没有见到我的妻子了。

I was on deadline for this article.

我这篇文章的截止日期。

My son was struggling in school.

我的儿子在学校很挣扎。

The house was in disarray.

房子里一片狼藉。

I played Marvin Gaye endlessly—“When you left, you took all of me with you.” Friends began to darkly recall the ghosts of post-Reconstruction.

我没完没了地扮演马文·盖伊——“当你离开时，你带走了我的全部。”朋友们开始回忆重建后的阴影。

The election of Donald Trump confirmed everything I knew of my country and none of what I could accept.

唐纳德·特朗普的当选证实了我对我的国家所了解的一切，但没有一个是我能接受的。

The idea that America would follow its first black president with Donald Trump accorded with its history.

美国将追随第一位黑人总统唐纳德·特朗普的想法符合其历史。

I was shocked at my own shock.

我对自己的震惊感到震惊。

I had wanted Obama to be right.

我本来希望奥巴马是对的。

I still want Obama to be right.

我仍然希望奥巴马是对的。

I still would like to fold myself into the dream.

我还是愿意把自己裹在梦里。

This will not be possible.

这是不可能的。

By some cosmic coincidence, a week after the election I received a portion of my father’s FBI file I was made aware of the FBI file by the diligent work of researchers from the show Finding Your Roots .

出于某种宇宙巧合，选举一周后，我收到了父亲的联邦调查局档案的一部分，通过《寻找你的根源》节目中研究人员的辛勤工作，我了解到了联邦调查局的档案。

I was taping an episode on my family the day of my last interview with the president.

上次采访总统的那天，我正在录制有关我家人的一集。

.

。

My father had grown up poor in Philadelphia.

我父亲在费城长大，家境贫寒。

His father was struck dead on the street.

他的父亲在街上被撞死了。

His grandfather was crushed to death in a meatpacking plant.

他的祖父在一家肉类加工厂被压死。

He’d served his country in Vietnam, gotten radicalized there, and joined the Black Panther Party, which brought him to the attention of J.

他曾在越南为祖国服务，在那里变得激进，并加入了黑豹党，这引起了 J.

Edgar Hoover.

埃德加·胡佛.

A memo written to the FBI director was “submitted aimed at discrediting WILLIAM PAUL COATES, Acting Captain of the BPP, Baltimore.” The memo proposed that a fake letter be sent to the Panthers’ co-founder Huey P.

一份写给联邦调查局局长的备忘录“旨在诋毁巴尔的摩 BPP 代理队长威廉·保罗·科茨”。该备忘录提议向黑豹队联合创始人 Huey P. 发送一封假信。

Newton.

牛顿。

The fake letter accused my father of being an informant and concluded, “I want somethin done with this bootlikin facist pig nigger and I want it done now.” The words somethin done need little interpretation.

这封假信指责我父亲是线人，并得出结论：“我想对这个偷懒的法西斯猪黑鬼做点什么，我希望现在就做。” “某事已完成”这句话几乎不需要解释。

The Panthers were eventually consumed by an internecine war instigated by the FBI, one in which being labeled a police informant was a death sentence.

黑豹队最终被联邦调查局煽动的一场自相残杀的战争所吞噬，在这场战争中，被贴上警察线人的标签就等于被判了死刑。

A few hours after I saw this file, I had my last conversation with the president.

在我看到这份文件几个小时后，我与总统进行了最后一次交谈。

I asked him how his optimism was holding up, given Trump’s victory.

我问他，鉴于特朗普的胜利，他的乐观情绪如何持续。

He confessed to being surprised at the outcome but said that it was tough to “draw a grand theory from it, because there were some very unusual circumstances.” He pointed to both candidates’ high negatives, the media coverage, and a “dispirited” electorate.

他承认对结果感到惊讶，但表示很难“从中得出一个宏大的理论，因为存在一些非常不寻常的情况。”他指出了两位候选人的高度负面评价、媒体报道以及“沮丧”的选民。

But he said that his general optimism about the shape of American history remained unchanged.

但他表示，他对美国历史形态的总体乐观态度并未改变。

“To be optimistic about the long-term trends of the United States doesn’t mean that everything is going to go in a smooth, direct, straight line,” he said.

“对美国的长期趋势持乐观态度并不意味着一切都会顺利、直接、直线地进行，”他说。

“It goes forward sometimes, sometimes it goes back, sometimes it goes sideways, sometimes it zigs and zags.”

“它有时向前，有时向后，有时横向，有时曲折。”

I thought of Hoover’s FBI, which harassed three generations of black activists, from Marcus Garvey’s black nationalists to Martin Luther King Jr.’s integrationists to Huey Newton’s Black Panthers, including my father.

我想到了胡佛的联邦调查局，它骚扰了三代黑人活动人士，从马库斯·加维的黑人民族主义者到马丁·路德·金的融合主义者，再到休伊·牛顿的黑豹党，其中包括我的父亲。

And I thought of the enormous power accrued to the presidency in the post-9/11 era—the power to obtain American citizens’ phone records en masse, to access their emails, to detain them indefinitely.

我想到了后 9/11 时代总统所拥有的巨大权力——获得大量美国公民的电话记录、访问他们的电子邮件、无限期拘留他们的权力。

I asked the president whether it was all worth it.

我问总统这一切是否值得。

Whether this generation of black activists and their allies should be afraid.

这一代黑人活动人士及其盟友是否应该感到害怕。

“Keep in mind that the capacity of the NSA, or other surveillance tools, are specifically prohibited from being applied to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons without specific evidence of links to terrorist activity or, you know, other foreign-related activity,” he said.

他说：“请记住，在没有具体证据证明与恐怖活动或其他涉外活动有联系的情况下，国家安全局或其他监视工具的能力被明确禁止应用于美国公民或美国人。”

“So, you know, I think this whole story line that somehow Big Brother has massively expanded and now that a new president is in place it’s this loaded gun ready to be used on domestic dissent is just not accurate.”

“所以，你知道，我认为整个故事情节，不知何故老大哥已经大规模扩展，现在新总统就位，这把上膛的枪准备好用来对付国内异议，这是不准确的。”

He counseled vigilance, “because the possibility of abuse by government officials always exists.

他建议保持警惕，“因为政府官员滥用职权的可能性始终存在。

The issue is not going to be that there are new tools available; the issue is making sure that the incoming administration, like my administration, takes the constraints on how we deal with U.S. citizens and persons seriously.” This answer did not fill me with confidence.

问题不是有新的工具可用，而是有新的工具可用。问题是确保即将上任的政府，像我的政府一样，认真对待我们如何与美国公民和个人打交道的限制。”这个答案并没有让我充满信心。

The next day, President-Elect Trump offered Lieutenant General Michael Flynn the post of national-security adviser and picked Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama as his nominee for attorney general.

第二天，当选总统特朗普向迈克尔·弗林中将提出国家安全顾问一职，并选择阿拉巴马州参议员杰夫·塞申斯作为司法部长的提名人。

Last February, Flynn tweeted, “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL” and linked to a YouTube video that declared followers of Islam want “80 percent of humanity enslaved or exterminated.” Sessions had once been accused of calling a black lawyer “boy,” claiming that a white lawyer who represented black clients was a disgrace to his race, and joking that he thought the Ku Klux Klan “was okay until I found out they smoked pot.” I felt then that I knew what was coming—more Freddie Grays, more Rekia Boyds, more informants and undercover officers sent to infiltrate mosques.

去年 2 月，弗林在推特上写道，“对穆斯林的恐惧是理性的”，并链接到一段 YouTube 视频，该视频宣称伊斯兰教追随者希望“80% 的人类被奴役或灭绝”。塞申斯曾被指控称一名黑人律师为“男孩”，声称一名代表黑人客户的白人律师是他种族的耻辱，并开玩笑说他认为三K党“还不错，直到我发现他们吸大麻”。那时我觉得我知道接下来会发生什么——更多的弗雷迪·格雷、更多的雷基亚·博伊德、更多的线人和便衣警察被派往清真寺渗透。

And I also knew that the man who could not countenance such a thing in his America had been responsible for the only time in my life when I felt, as the first lady had once said, proud of my country, and I knew that it was his very lack of countenance, his incredible faith, his improbable trust in his countrymen, that had made that feeling possible.

我也知道，这个在他的美国无法容忍这样的事情的人，对我一生中唯一一次感到负责，就像第一夫人曾经说过的那样，为我的国家感到自豪，我知道正是他的面无表情，他令人难以置信的信仰，他对他的同胞难以置信的信任，才让这种感觉成为可能。

The feeling was that little black boy touching the president’s hair.

那种感觉就是那个黑人小男孩抚摸总统的头发。

It was watching Obama on the campaign trail, always expecting the worst and amazed that the worst never happened.

它在观察奥巴马的竞选活动，总是期待着最坏的情况发生，并惊讶于最坏的情况从未发生。

It was how I’d felt seeing Barack and Michelle during the inauguration, the car slow-dragging down Pennsylvania Avenue, the crowd cheering, and then the two of them rising up out of the limo, rising up from fear, smiling, waving, defying despair, defying history, defying gravity.

这就是我在就职典礼期间看到巴拉克和米歇尔的感受，汽车缓慢地沿着宾夕法尼亚大道行驶，人群欢呼，然后他们两个从豪华轿车中站起来，从恐惧中站起来，微笑，挥手，反抗绝望，反抗历史，反抗地心引力。