公民権運動を振り返ってみる – Reflecting on the Civil Rights Movement

公民権運動の時代と現在を比べた場合、黒人差別・人種差別の勢いが強いのはどちらか？一般的には黒人差別が少なくなったと思う。

公民権運動のおかげで、進歩は明らかだと思います。ただ、諸民族がみんな平等な立場になったということではない。黒人、白人、中国系、中近東系の人の中では、幅があります。先のラストベルトの失業した白人、金融界でぼろ儲けの白人、様々な人がいます。黒人の中でも同様で成功した黒人企業家もいる。この幅が広くなって下層が増えて、トップがぼろ儲けだ。皮膚の色はそれほど関係ありません。

Compared with the period of the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968), racial discrimination as a whole has weakened. Discrimination was extremely widespread and violent then; now it still exists, but it is not as strong among the general public.

I believe that there has been clear progress as a result of the movement, but that does not mean that all minorities stand on an equal footing. There is considerable difference between blacks, whites, Chinese-Americans, and people of Mid-East origins. There is a huge gap between whites in the Rust Belt who have lost their jobs and whites in the financial world who are making enormous sums of money. There is a similar gap between successful black entrepreneurs and black laborers who cannot find a job. There is an overall gap between whites and blacks, but there is a huge gap within each group respectively.

「ラストベルト地帯」での人種差別 – Racial discrimination in the Rust Belt

West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, Ohioとそれより北のRust Beltでは、blue-collar workers が働いた工場や炭坑が閉鎖されていました。怒りを管理職、政府、無力だった労働者組合に向けても、どうしようもない。では、どこで働くか？ 近くには同様の職場は無く、新しい仕事を他の地域で得ようとしても、工場は海外に移転しているかオートメーション化されています。結局仕事はありません。では、生活保護を受けるしかないと絶望感で溢れ、誇りが消え、場合によってはドラッグに手を出すことになってしまう。

それで "I am your voice!"と言っている大統領候補が出てきます。「もう、今まで国会も、政治も、オバマも、何もやってくれなかったから、何でもいい。トランプに一票」ということになったのだと思います。

Blue-collar workers in the factories and mines of West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, Ohio and the other Rust Belt cities to the north, found little support when their workplaces closed permanently. They were angry at the company management, the government and the powerless unions, but no one could do anything about jobs that disappeared. Where else could they work? There were no similar jobs nearby; it was futile to go looking for a new type of job in a completely different place; and automation was taking over a lot of work. With no work, they had to swallow their pride and go on welfare. They lost all sense of hope for the future and pride from a job well done. Some even took up drugs.

Then along came someone saying “I am your voice!” and he’s running for president. They responded to this. The government had not helped them, nor the politicians, nor President Obama, as far as they could tell. “Anything is better than this!” they seemed to say. “So I’m voting for Trump. At least he’s different from everybody else.”

Where Does Racism Come From?

President Barack Obama has recently tweeted that children are not born racist. Unfortunately, in America some learn to become racist.

One might assume that the people of America would share a collective memory. They should remember the prejudice and violence aimed at black Americans from 1619 through the Civil Rights Movement to the present day. For black people, this collective memory includes the images of night-time torches, burning crosses, and KKK rhetoric about protecting the "purity of the white race" and the supposed "inferiority of the colored races." Donald Trump clearly does not share this collective memory when he suggests that there is "racism on both sides."

On NPR NewsHour, Leonard Pitts, Jr., an excellent journalist for the Miami Herald put it very well: White Americans think that being called a "racist" means they are not nice people. They want to be thought of as nice, so if you call them racist, it affects the quality of their day.

To black Americans, however, racism affects not just the quality of their day but the quality of their lives. In fact, as we have seen in police shootings of black men, it may even cost them their lives.

渡辺由佳里さん - アメリカの今を知る情報源

最近はアメリカの大統領選や新大統領就任のニュースを見る様になりましたね。それでも、日本に入ってくる情報は限られていると感じます。

そんな中、ボストン在住のエッセイストで翻訳家・作家の渡辺由佳里さんの記事やツイッターは貴重な情報源なのではないかと思います。とてもリサーチされていて情報を発信していらっしゃいます。最近では「偽ニュース」についてとても良い記事を書かれました。ぜひ、たくさんの方に読んでいただきたいと思います。

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