白人工人階層理應重新得到尊重

When I started university in Britain in 1988, political correctness didn’t exist. If a woman tried to speak at a students’ meeting, the cry would go up, “Get your tits out for the lads!” The ritual climax of bar conversations was a double entendre about homosexuality. But, in 1993, I went to study in the US and discovered PC. The American students I met didn’t make racist, sexist or homophobic jokes. When I returned home and told British friends about this strange new world, they explained that it was because Americans were humourless. This wasn’t actually true. The Americans were much funnier than the Brits with their eternal gay jokes.

1988年我在英國剛上大學那會兒，還不存在政治正確。如果一位女士想在學生集會上發言，底下就會噓聲四起，“胸露出來給哥們瞧瞧！”酒吧聊天的一個固定高潮就是有關同性戀的下流雙關語。但是1993年我去美國求學時，我第一次知道了政治正確。我遇到的美國學生不會開種族主義、性別歧視或忌憚同性戀的玩笑。而當我回到英國，向朋友們講述這個奇怪的新世界時，他們說那是因爲美國人沒有幽默感。這當然不是真的。美國人的同性戀段子比英國人的好笑得多。

The attempt to shut out any views deemed undesirable has since got out of hand on some US campuses. On recent visits I have found the policing of speech chastening. One liberal, male, feminist professor told me of a fairly anodyne analysis that he didn’t dare publish for fear of being hounded as sexist. Even many liberals now want to roll back PC speech codes.

這種把任何被視爲不可取的觀點都拒之門外的嘗試，在一些美國大學校園裏已漸漸失控。在最近的訪問期間，我感到這種對言論的管束令人壓抑。一位信奉女權的自由派男性教授給了我一個相當四平八穩的分析：他不敢著述，因爲害怕被當做性別歧視者而受到聲討。就連許多自由派人士現在都想在一定程度上逆轉政治正確言論準則。

But, in fact, PC’s basic demand — respect all groups — needs to be rolled out more widely. We now have PC for women, and racial and sexual minorities. If we had it for the working classes, too, that could change the political climate. Two rather different politicians — Donald Trump and Nelson Mandela — have shown us the outlines of a working-class PC.

但事實上，政治正確的基本訴求——尊重所有羣體——需要更全面地推廣。我們現在對女性、種族和性取向少數人羣都講政治正確。如果我們對工人階層也講政治正確，政治氣候可能會發生改變。唐納德?特朗普(Donald Trump)和納爾遜?曼德拉(Nelson Mandela)這兩位截然不同的政界人士向我們展示了工人階層政治正確的輪廓。

TV programmes in western countries rightly don’t make fun of blacks, gays or Jews any more, but the white working class (WWC) enjoys no such protection. A genre of “poverty porn” TV (think Benefits Street and Wife Swap in Britain) mocks the WWC as wasters enjoying their morning beers on the sofa.

西方國家電視節目正確地不再拿黑人、同性戀或猶太人取樂，但白人工人階層(WWC)享受不到這種保護。英國有一類“貧窮色情”電視節目，比如《福利街》(Benefits Street)和《換妻》(Wife Swap)，專門嘲諷這些白人工人階層，把他們描繪成一大早就癱坐在沙發上喝啤酒的廢物。

The WWC are known as chavs in Britain, canis in Spain and “white trash” in the US. Chav-based fancy-dress parties — a distant relative of “blackface parties” — enjoyed a brief fad among British students. Prince William attended one while at his military academy, Sandhurst, as Owen Jones recounts in Chavs, his 2011 book on the demonisation of the working class in Britain.

白人工人階層在英國被稱爲“chavs”，在西班牙被稱爲“canis”，在美國被稱爲“white trash”（白人垃圾）。Chav主題的化裝舞會——“黑臉舞會”的遠親——一度在英國學生間風行。歐文?瓊斯(Owen Jones)在他2011年出版的有關英國工人階層的著作《Chavs：工人階級的妖魔化》(Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class)中提到，威廉王子(Prince William)在桑赫斯特軍事學院(Sandhurst)期間就參加過這種舞會。