消除误解：还原一个真实的马丁·路德·金 | 经济学人（内含ChatGPT ios版如何下载使用）

Culture | The last Founding Father

文化｜最后一位奠基者

Culture | The last Founding Father

文化｜最后一位奠基者

Martin Luther King was among the greatest Americans—and the most misunderstood

马丁·路德·金是是美国历史上最伟大，亦是被人们误解最深的人物之一

Jonathan Eig’s magnificent new biography wrestles with him in all his complexity

由乔纳森·艾格（Jonathan Eig）撰写最新出版的路德金传记是一部宏伟巨著，探究了金的所有复杂性

Six months after Florida’s board of education banned “critical race theory” (CRT)—in essence, the study of structural racism—from its classrooms, Ron DeSantis, the governor, introduced legislation further restricting what his state’s teachers could say about race. He invoked an unlikely ally: “You think about what MLK stood for,” he told a crowd last year. “He didn’t want people judged on the colour of their skin, but on the content of their character.” Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives, invoked King too: CRT, he said, “goes against everything Martin Luther King junior taught us—not to judge others by the colour of their skin.”

“批判性种族理论”（CRT）本质上是一种研究结构性种族主义的理论，而六个月前，佛罗里达州教育委员会禁止（老师）在课堂上教授该理论。而如今，佛州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯（Ron DeSantis）提交法案，要进一步限制该州教师有关种族的言论。去年，德桑蒂斯州长在一次公开演讲时提到了一位让人意想不到的盟友：“大家想想马丁·路德·金代表着什么？他希望以品格优劣而不是肤色深浅来评判一个人。”众议院议长凯文·麦卡锡（Kevin McCarthy）同样援引了金：他说CRT“与马丁·路德·金的全部教诲，即不以肤色评判他人的概念背道而驰”。

The phrase “content of their character”, which King used in his “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered at the March on Washington of 1963, has become one of his best known. Out of context, it seems to advocate colour-blindness towards individuals above all else, even to suggest that policies which take account of racial inequities are themselves unfairly biased. That is a misunderstanding of King’s views—and it is far from the only one in wide circulation. The reverence with which Americans of all political stripes view him today obscures how deeply divisive he was in his time.

1963年，金在华盛顿游行示威中发表了演讲《我有一个梦想》，其中首次使用“他们的品格优劣”这一提法，如今已成为金最广为人知的名言之一。假如不考虑时代背景，这一说法好像把“不通过肤色评判个体”放在至高无上的位置，甚至还认为只要政策谈及种族不平等，那么政策本身就是不公平和有偏见的。这是对金观点的误解，金有很多观点都被误解，而且误解深入人心。如今，美国各个政治派别的人都对金尊敬有加，掩盖了金在他那个时代曾引起巨大社会分歧事实。

注释：

1.“March on Washington”：向华盛顿进军，该词专指1963年8月28日在华盛顿发生的美国历史上最大的一次人权集会。马丁·路德·金正是在该次集会上发表了《我有一个梦想》这篇演讲。

2.divisive：造成不和的；引起分歧的；制造分裂的causing people to be split into groups that disagree with or oppose each other

King was a thorny, prophetic, demanding thinker. He struggled to balance his optimistic patriotism against self-doubt and, later in his life, against his creeping pessimism about America’s ability to overcome its demons. Jonathan Eig’s magnificent new biography is an overdue attempt to grapple with King in all his complexity.

作为思想家，金锋芒毕露、有先见之明、要求苛刻。他一直在奋力寻求平衡，先是乐观的爱国主义和自我怀疑之间的平衡，之后是乐观的爱国主义和逐渐产生的对美国是否有能力打破魔咒的悲观之间的平衡。乔纳森·艾格（Jonathan Eig）新出版的宏伟传记尽管有些姗姗来迟，却是在试图探讨金的复杂性。

His book will inevitably draw comparisons with “America in the King Years”, a three-volume history by Taylor Branch. But that trilogy was sprawling and expansive—almost 3,000 pages long, and as much about America between 1954 and 1968 as about King. Mr Eig’s is a more traditional biography, and the book benefits from its narrower focus. It gives the reader more insight into the multifaceted man himself.

他的著作不禁让人想起泰勒·布兰奇（Taylor Branch）的三卷历史著作《“金”日美国》。这套书篇幅长，内容范围广，近三千页，不仅围绕着马丁·路德·金展开，还反映了美国1954至1968年间历史。艾格的作品更像是一本传统的传记，由于重点突出而略胜一筹，可以帮助读者更好地了解马丁·路德·金复杂的性格。

For though King was a great man, he was not a saint. He plagiarised, philandered, was unkind and sometimes cruel to his wife, and seems to have suffered from what is now recognised as depression. He was also funny, fond of good food and politically shrewd. A doting father, he had a gift for friendship and extraordinary reserves of patience and discipline. Mr Eig makes his courage and moral vision seem all the more exceptional for having come from a man with ordinary flaws.

尽管马丁·路德·金是一个伟人，却不是一个圣人。他也会抄袭、拈花惹草、言行乖戾、有时对妻子也很不好，而且现在看来，他似乎患有抑郁症。但他也很幽默、喜欢美食，并且拥有敏锐的政治嗅觉。他宠爱自己的孩子，善与人交，而且极度有耐心与自律。艾格描绘的马丁·路德·金拥有普通人的缺点，这让他的勇气和道德观看起来更加难能可贵。

King was the product of a middle-class upbringing, and of a family ensconced in Atlanta’s black bourgeoisie. His father, affectionately known as “Daddy King”, was strong-willed and stern; he preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church, making it one of the city’s more prominent black churches. King attended Morehouse College, then as now one of America’s best historically black universities, before moving on to seminary in Pennsylvania and graduate school in theology at Boston University.

马丁·路德·金出身中产阶层，一家人居住在亚特兰大的黑人中产阶级社区。人们亲切地称他父亲“金老爹（Daddy King）”。他性格坚毅、对人严厉，平时在埃比尼泽浸信会教堂（Ebenezer Baptist Church）布道，让这个教堂成为亚特兰大最知名的黑人教堂之一。马丁·路德·金先到莫尔豪斯学院就读，这所学校时至今日一直是美国最好的黑人大学之一；之后，他又去了宾夕法尼亚大学神学院和波士顿大学神学研究生院。

Now remembered for his oratory, as a young seminarian, Mr Eig notes, “he earned As in his philosophy classes and Cs in public speaking.” Mr Eig speculates that some of his northern, white professors “were not enthralled with the black Baptist style”. The high marks in philosophy, however, are unsurprising: King was a student of ideas for his entire life. Written in 1963, his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is renowned for its moral force and lucid prose. It also bristles with allusions—to the Old and New Testaments, but also Thomas Aquinas, Reinhold Neibuhr, Martin Buber and others. (It did not mention Mohandas Gandhi, whose philosophy of non-violent resistance was perhaps the single greatest influence on King’s life and work.)

现在人们印象里的马丁·路德·金擅长演讲，但艾格指出，马丁·路德·金在神学院上学时“哲学课的成绩经常是A，而演讲课的成绩则常常是C”。艾格猜测这可能是因为北方出身的白人教授对金演讲的“黑人浸信会演讲风格不喜欢”。然而，哲学课的好成绩却是意料之中的：金一生都很有想法和见解。1963年他写了著名的《来自伯明翰监狱的信》，文章思想强大，文字简练。这封信也旁征博引，引用了《旧约》与《新约》，也引用了托马斯·阿奎纳（Thomas Aquinas）、雷茵霍尔德·尼布尔（Reinhold Neibuhr）和马丁·布伯（Martin Buber）等人的观点。（这封信没有提到莫汉达斯·甘地 [Mohandas Gandhi]，而甘地的非暴力不合作思想对金的生活和工作产生的影响可能是最大的。）

He found his voice as a political leader on December 5th 1955, when he was just 26 and a newly installed pastor in Montgomery, Alabama. At Holt Street Baptist Church that evening, four days after the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, he addressed a crowd of black Alabamans. They were concerned about the response that their boycott of Montgomery’s buses might provoke from the city’s whites.

1955年12月5日，金作为政治领袖发声，当时他只有26岁，是亚拉巴马州蒙哥马利市刚刚上任的牧师。就在四天前，罗莎·帕克斯（Rosa Parks）因为在公交车上拒绝给白人乘客让座被捕。当夜，金在霍尔特街浸信会教堂（Holt Street Baptist Church）对亚拉巴马州的黑人信众发表讲话。这些黑人关心的是他们抵制蒙哥马利公交车后，本市白人会作何反应。

Mr Eig explains that King “needed to embolden without embittering”. He had to acknowledge his audience’s justified anger yet persuade them to protest righteously and hopefully. Speaking without notes, he advanced a reassuring argument deeply rooted in American and Christian traditions. “We are not wrong,” he declared. “If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.”

艾格写道，金“需要在不加深怨恨的同时让大家鼓起勇气”。他必须承认听众的愤怒是合理的，但又要说服他们怀抱希望、以正义的方式抗议。金的演讲没有稿子，他提出了一个深植于美国和基督教传统的观点，打消了人们的疑虑。他宣称“我们没有错如果我们错了，那么这个国家的最高法院也错了。如果我们错了，那么美国宪法也错了。如果我们错了，那么全能的上帝也错了。”

Like a mighty stream

如泉喷涌

They were not wrong—and that may have been the mid-century civil-rights movement’s greatest strength. King’s efforts to overturn legal segregation were at once radical, because African-Americans had been second-class citizens since America’s founding, and based on straightforward American ideals. He understood that the country’s promises of freedom and equality were hollow if geography or skin colour could invalidate them.

他们并没有错，而这可能是上世纪中叶民权运动最大的优势。金为推翻法律上的种族隔离所做的努力曾一度有些激进，因为自美国建国以来，从显而易见的美国理想主意来看，非裔美国人一直就是二等公民。他明白，如果地域或肤色可以让国家对自由和平等的承诺荡然无存，那么这些承诺便苍白无力。

Moral suasion was not enough. King also led the most successful pressure campaign in American history, enduring beatings, bombings, imprisonment, scorn, the arms’-length caution of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson’s two-faced truculence, and illegal monitoring and harassment by the FBI. Within a decade of his address in Holt Street, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. He signed the Fair Housing Act, outlawing discrimination in housing, a week after an assassin’s bullet ended King’s life in 1968.

单靠道德劝说是不够的。金还领导了美国历史上最成功的施压运动，忍受了殴打、炸弹袭击、监禁、嘲笑、约翰·肯尼迪的疏远防备、林登·约翰逊两面三刀的挑衅、以及FBI的非法监视和骚扰。在霍尔特街演讲发表后的十年内，约翰逊签署了《民权法案》和《选举权法案》。1968年，暗杀者的一颗子弹结束了金的生命，而一周后，约翰逊就签署了禁止住房歧视的《公平住房法案》。

注释：

Lyndon Johnson：林登·约翰逊（1908-1973），美国第36任总统（1963-1969）。任期内通过多项改善国内民生和民权的法案，是美国现代解放主义活动的巅峰时期。

Yet by the time King died many considered him yesterday’s man. His opposition to the war in Vietnam alienated some of his compatriots. The civil-rights movement had splintered, as more radical voices, such as Stokely Carmichael’s, grew louder. Many white Americans saw ending segregation as the movement’s goal, when, for King, it was just the start: his aim was brotherhood and equality. As the 55 years since his death have shown, achieving those through policy is fiendishly difficult.

然而，金去世时，许多人认为他已成为过去式。他反对越南战争的立场使一些同胞疏远了他。民权运动已经分裂出不同派别，像斯托克利·卡迈克尔（Stokely Carmichael）等激进派的声音变得越来越响亮。许多美国白人认为终结种族隔离是这场运动的目标，而对于金而言，这只是开始：他的目标是人人友爱和平等。现在距离金去世已有55年，通过政策实现这些目标依然极其困难。

A difficult goal can be worth striving for, however. And it does King and his quest an injustice to suggest he called only for colour-blindness and not, as he put it in 1967, “a reconstruction of the entire society”, perhaps involving the nationalisation of industry and a guaranteed basic income. Such ideas may be discomforting, including for those who would enlist King as an opponent of CRT: always sceptical of “the tranquillising drug of gradualism”, he came to believe that most Americans “are unconscious racists”. But those were still his views, even if expressing them could spell trouble for a teacher in Florida.

然而，艰难的目标是值得努力追求的。有人认为金只呼吁消除肤色带来的差异，而不追求他在1967年所说的“整个社会的重建”，这可能涉及产业国有化和基本收入保障。对金本人和他的努力而言，这种观点并不公正。但下面的观点令人不快，对那些认为金反对CRT的人而言也是如此：金一直对“渐进主义的镇静毒药”持怀疑态度，相信大多数美国人“是无意识的种族主义者”。但这仍是他的观点，而对于佛罗里达州的一名普通教师而言，表达这些观点都可能会惹祸上身。

注释：

“the tranquillising drug of gradualism”出自金的这句话：“This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” 指的是他想以一种更快速而非循序渐进的方式获得民权。

翻译组：   

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