fa78-1 robot:双语对照 - 【时代周刊】谁是白人？谁是黑人？谁能明晓？

　　对于你所听到的可别见怪，哈莉·贝瑞（Halle Berry）并非首位摘得奥斯卡影后桂冠的黑人女性，她实际是第74位白人女性。也别介意有关美国选出它首位黑人总统的论断；巴拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama）实际是第44位坐上此位的白人。

That, at any rate, is as fair a conclusion as any, given that Berry and Obama and millions like them are the products of one black parent and one white one. And yet it's a conclusion that almost no one ever reaches. Part-black generally means all-black in Americans' minds. Just as part-Asian or part-Hispanic or part-anything-else usually puts individuals in those minority-groups' camps. Such a curious bias is as old as the nation itself, and a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology illustrates just how stubborn it is — and suggests just what may be behind it. (More on Time.com: They All Look the Same: How Racism Works Neurologically)

　　无论如何，这是一个放之四海皆准的公正结论，因为贝瑞和奥巴马，以及与他们情况相似的数百万人，都是一位黑人父母与一位白人父母的后代。然而上述结论几乎从来无人触及。在美国人思维里，部分黑人一般被看作全黑人。犹如对待部分亚裔、部分西班牙裔或其他什么部分族群一样，往往将个体置于那些少数群体的阵营里。这种难以理解的偏见跟这个国度一样古老，而《人格与社会心理学杂志》的一项新研究解读了它究竟有多顽固不化——并暗示了或隐于背后的究竟是什么。

It was in 1662 that the colony of Virginia first tried to codify the legal definition of people whose racial pedigree was less than completely pure. To make things simple in a land in which plantation owners were already taking sexual liberties with their slaves, the lawmakers established what they called the "one-drop" rule — also known as hypodescent — declaring that any person with mixed blood who resulted from such a pairing would be assigned the race of the nonwhite parent.

　　1662年，弗吉尼亚的殖民者率先尝试编写种族血统非完全纯粹人群的法律定义。当时这片土地上种植园主狎戏自家奴隶已经习以为常，为了便宜行事，法律制定者创立了他们所称的“一滴血（one-drop）”规则——也被称为次血统（hypodescent）——宣称任何这样结合而生下的混血人将被划归非白人父母的种族。

That seemed clear enough, but things got tricky when the nonwhite ancestor was a grandparent or a great-grandparent and the minority blood became increasingly diluted. Creative legislators, however, had answers for that too. The so-called "blood-fraction" laws of 1705 ruled that anyone who was at least 1/8 black — which meant one black great grandparent —  could not be labeled white. A 1911 Arkansas law went further, declaring that citizens would be considered black if they had "any Negro blood whatever." And if you think that all that is an artifact of a less enlightened time, think again. A 1970 Louisiana law defined as black anyone who had at least 1/32 African-American blood — and in 1985, a state court upheld the legislation. (More on Time.com: How Kids Get Clobbered by Racial Discrimination)

　　这看来够清楚了吧，但当非白人祖先是祖辈或曾祖辈，少数种族血统越来越稀释时，情况又变得微妙起来。然而，创新的立法者对此也给出了答案。1705年所谓的“血统分数”法律规定，任何人只要有1/8的黑人血统——即有一位黑人曾祖辈——就不能认作白人。1911年阿肯色州一项法律则做得更绝，声称如果公民有“一丁点黑人血统”，就应被视作黑人。倘若你认为所有这些都是欠昌明时期的典型产物，那你就错了。1970年路易斯安那州一项法律规定只要有1/32非裔美国人血统就是黑人——1985年，一家州立法院通过了此项立法。

But this much can be said for the folks who wrote such nasty rules: They may have been no better than most other Americans, but they were no worse either, at least in their tendency to apply the hypodescent rule in their own minds, often unconcsiously. To test how this phenomenon applies today, a team of Harvard University psychologists led by PhD student Arnold K. Ho gathered a sample group of black, white and Asian volunteers and showed them computer-generated images of individuals designed to look either black-white or Asian-white. They also showed them family trees that depicted various degrees of racial commingling.

　　不过，关于这些编写龌龊法规的人，要说的还不止这么多：他们或许不比其他大多数美国人好，但却也不比之更糟，至少在认同次血统规则的倾向上，他们常常是下意识的。为了测试这一现象今天是否依然适用，由博士生阿诺德（Arnold K. Ho）领导的一个哈佛大学心理学研究者团队召集了包含白人、黑人和亚裔志愿者在内的一组抽样人群，并给他们展示了电脑生成的个体图，该图设计用来查看到底是白人-黑人、亚裔-白人，还是其他种族混合类型。试验者还给受测对象展示了描绘程度不一种族混合情形的族谱。

Repeatedly, the subjects hypodescended the individuals both in the pictures and in the diagrams, but not always consistently. People who were just one-quarter Asian or one-quarter black, for example, were overwhelmingly assigned to the minority group, but this happened somewhat less frequently for the Asians.

　　在图片与图表上，这些对象都反复次血统化个体，但情况并非始终如一。那些半是白人半是黑人或半是白人半是亚裔的，都典型地标识自己归属他们父母中少数种族那一类。然而，当混血中只有四分之一亚裔血统或四分之一黑人血统时，结果却出现了一些分歧，一滴血法则被更频繁地适用于四分之一黑人血统的目标图。

When the experimenters used imaging software to adjust the pictures of the mixed-race individuals subtly, the data became even more precise. On a scale of 5% white and 95% black to 95% white and 5% black, the target images generally had to cross the 68% white threshold before subjects identified the people as Caucasian. For Asian-white faces the bar was set lower — but only slightly — at 63%. And perhaps surprisingly, it was not just white subjects who showed this bias; Asians and blacks applied the one-drop rule with about the same frequency. (More on Time.com: Can Megachurches Bridge the Racial Divide?)

　　试验者使用图像处理软件对混合种族个体的图片作出巧妙调整之后，数据甚至变得更为精确了。按照混血比例，依次从5%白人血统+95%黑人血统到95%黑人血统+5%白人血统排列，一般目标图只有越过68%白人血统的阈值，受测对象才认同此人为白种人。对于亚裔-白种人而言，这个门限则设得更低一些——不过只是略微下降到63%。或许出人意料的是，不仅只有白人对象显示出这种偏见，亚裔与黑人应用一滴血规则的频率也如出一辙。

That last finding may be the most revealing of the study — at least in helping to determine why we assign people the identities we do. Since all humans — and most nonhumans for that matter — identify with their own clan  from infancy, you would think all races would show the same hypodescent bias in favor of their own group. The fact that nearly everyone in a mixed-race society, however, targets the same minority groups for one-drop demotion is a telling indicator that the phenomenon is learned — and powerfully so.

　　最后一项发现可能是该研究最透露实情的——至少有助于确定我们为何如此认同自己的身份。既然所有人类——就此而言，也包括大多数非人类——打婴儿起，就认同他们自己的族群，所以你就认为所有人种都会显示出同样的次血统偏见，站在自己族群一边。然而事实却是，在混合种族的社会中，几乎人人都以一滴血降级观念瞄准了相同的少数种群，这是一项很说明问题的指标，表明该现象是可被学习的——而且学习作用还如此强大。

"When we see in our data that our own minds are limited in the perception of [bi-racial people]," says Mahzarin R. Banaji, a Harvard professor of social ethics and a co-author of the study, "we see how far we have to go in order to have an objectively accurate and fair assessment of people." It's hard to argue with qualities like fairness and objectivity in our dealings with others. In a nation that's becoming more multi-cultural and multi-racial by the day, it's hard to minimize their importance either.

　　“当我们从数据中发现，在对【双种族人群】的看法上，我们的心智受到制约时，”哈佛社会伦理学教授巴纳吉（Mahzarin R. Banaji）评论道，他同时也是该项研究的合著者之一，“我们才明白，要客观准确、不带偏见地评判人，该是件多么遥远的事。”在对待他人的问题上，我们很难说自己具有公正和客观之类的优秀品质。但在一个随时间推移越来越文化多元、种族多元的国度，他们的重要性也不容低估。