在audible上聽(tīng)的一本小書(shū)。是黑人作者Ta-Nehisi Coates寫(xiě)給14歲兒子的書(shū)。睡前聽(tīng)總有一種苦大仇深的感覺(jué)。他通過(guò)歷史、黑人遭慘死的各種新聞事件，來(lái)向自己的孩子講述身為黑人成長(zhǎng)的經(jīng)歷，必須面臨的挑戰(zhàn)。他不斷重復(fù)“black body”，講述那些摧毀黑人生命和摧毀黑人身體的故事。聽(tīng)起來(lái)感覺(jué)還是有點(diǎn)depressing，而且因?yàn)樗麄兊纳w驗(yàn)跟自己的相差太多，所以聽(tīng)起來(lái)有種奇怪的隔閡、但又有不能完全共情的同情和感動(dòng)：因?yàn)楦赣H對(duì)孩子的愛(ài)是可以理解的，但這種擔(dān)驚受怕的感受又會(huì)讓我question這種是不是擔(dān)心過(guò)度。
“So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I’d heard people tell their black boys and black girls to “be twice as good,” which is to say “accept half as much.” These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile.”
Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered.”
But race is the child of racism, not the father.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates被譽(yù)為是繼James Baldwin之后的一個(gè)重要black intellectual。他在馬里蘭長(zhǎng)大，也是一個(gè)黑人聚集區(qū)。他是歷史最悠久的黑人大學(xué)Howard University的畢業(yè)生，這種成長(zhǎng)學(xué)習(xí)的特殊性讓他對(duì)于作為African american的特殊經(jīng)歷非常敏感。他目前是大西洋月刊的記者專欄作家。
Coates與奧巴馬
Coates的聲名鵲起是因?yàn)樵诿駲?quán)法案簽署50周年時(shí)，在大西洋月刊發(fā)表了長(zhǎng)篇報(bào)道The Case for Reparations，揭露美國(guó)社會(huì)在經(jīng)濟(jì)、司法系統(tǒng)等存在系統(tǒng)性種族歧視，成為了大西洋月刊歷史上引發(fā)最大反響的封面報(bào)道之一。
鏈接：http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
雖然同為黑人，但是coates和奧巴馬常有爭(zhēng)論。在奧巴馬的任期中，他也曾多次撰文批評(píng)奧巴馬沒(méi)有在種族問(wèn)題上有更多的作為。奧巴馬在馬丁案時(shí)的發(fā)言，曾經(jīng)在美國(guó)引起巨大的震動(dòng)。雖然我個(gè)人覺(jué)得是一個(gè)非常感人的發(fā)言，但coates認(rèn)為奧巴馬做的只是在”racilaized political fodder“。奧巴馬的競(jìng)選團(tuán)隊(duì)曾經(jīng)說(shuō)黑人是絕對(duì)當(dāng)不了總統(tǒng)，但一個(gè)天才的、前途無(wú)量的年輕人，碰巧是黑人，那他是有可能的。而奧巴馬和他的team也深諳如何吸引黑人選民：
Obama doesn’t merely evince blackness; he uses his blackness to signal and court African Americans, semaphoring in a cultural dialect of our creation—crooning Al Green at the Apollo, name-checking Young Jeezy, regularly appearing on the cover of black magazines, weighing the merits of Jay-Z versus Kanye West, being photo-graphed in the White House with a little black boy touching his hair.
摘自fear of a black president
奧巴馬給黑人開(kāi)出的建議，被coatesz總結(jié)成：Acceptance depends not just on being twice as good but on being half as black. 不去address系統(tǒng)性的discrimination，要求個(gè)人承擔(dān)更多的責(zé)任。
記得在聽(tīng)off message的podcast時(shí)，卡森對(duì)奧巴馬成為總統(tǒng)的感受。我覺(jué)得是非常有趣的瞬間，但是主持人沒(méi)有繼續(xù)問(wèn)下去了?？ㄉ彩峭瑯釉诎蜖柕哪﹂L(zhǎng)大，貧民窟小孩，成為妙手神醫(yī)，但他說(shuō)，雖然作為美國(guó)人，為國(guó)家打破膚色壁壘選出黑人總統(tǒng)高興，但意識(shí)到，奧巴馬不是美國(guó)的african american，奧巴馬是raise white。
特別想知道卡大夫覺(jué)得真正的黑人總統(tǒng)，應(yīng)該如何處理美國(guó)的種族大難題。
在trump時(shí)期，族裔問(wèn)題，奧巴馬已經(jīng)推動(dòng)的這些criminal justice的改革到底會(huì)如何走向？
