美国国家公共电台 NPR On 'White Fear Being Weaponized' And How To Respond

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

On Tuesday, Starbucks will hold implicit¹ bias² training for more than 100,000 employees in response to the arrest of two black men at a store in Philadelphia. Since that arrest in April, more and more of these instances have been documented, instances with mostly white people calling the police on people of color for insignificant³ reasons.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING⁴)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Remove yourself from our premises⁵...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Please.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: ...Please, because the authorities have been called.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: No. We're taking our suitcases out of the house we're staying in.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Right. They said, like, luggage and stuff so...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Because there's three black people in the neighborhood.

(SOUNDBITE OF RECORDING MONTAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: You have your ID on you?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Yeah, I do.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: All right. Can we see that?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Why?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Because we got a police call for you.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Unintelligible) and we need to make sure that you belong here.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That was a campus police officer saying we need to make sure that you belong here. The incidents you just heard happened at a golf course, a neighborhood in Rialto, Calif., and at a dorm at Yale. We asked Khalil Muhammad, a professor of race, history and public policy at Harvard, why he thinks these instances are getting more publicity⁶.

KHALIL MUHAMMAD: I think they're getting more attention because the stakes seem to be much higher in our very highly charged, partisan⁷ moment. Our current president ran as a law-and-order candidate in a country with a long history where the notion of using the police as the foot soldiers of controlling African-Americans, limiting their freedom, deciding that they are indeed second-class citizens and enforcing those laws when they were legal in this country is a really big part of the problem. And to evoke⁸ that mantra, to run on that mantra, to elicit⁹ the support of the entire community of professional police agencies means that we've now got citizens who are playing out this policy choice, this set of politics. And that's a big, big deal.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: How does that work, practically speaking? I mean, how does that play into this public debate and public conversation that we're having?

MUHAMMAD: Well, I think we could reasonably say, on one side of this, where citizens feel that it's OK to be afraid of potential black criminals or brown ones or Native American ones. They are not feeling like they're going to be censured¹⁰ for that. So that raises the possibility that more people will pick up the phone or threaten. On the other side of the ledger¹¹, people who were fighting against this kind of ethos in our country - this very punitive¹², racialized ethos - want to resist this now. So they're much more likely to pull out their cellphones, whether they're whites or blacks, and say, this is not OK. And because of cellphone video and its ubiquitous role in this conversation, all of us are bearing witness to the problem.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Are we seeing this problem, though, happen more? Or is it just now that people are documenting it and discussing it more?

MUHAMMAD: I think that we really just can't know for sure how much greater the problem is. What we can know for sure is that we are having a national dialogue about it that is much more significant and increased in the number of participants in that dialogue than I've certainly seen in my lifetime. We cannot keep up with the names or the footage itself of these instances. So I think that we have to be careful not to say the scale has increased. What has definitely increased is the amount of video evidence, the amount of copy, meaning what journalists are writing around these issues, and even the organizing around trying to do something about it.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you think the way we're seeing these incidents are changing? Or is a certain part of the population having a conversation with itself? I mean, can you reach people on the other side who see things differently?

MUHAMMAD: I think you can, but I think it takes time. And I think that part of the problem is that we have a scale problem. I think that policing in general - it's got to begin to reflect on the fact that people who they've been policing under various forms of zero tolerance¹³ policies or broken windows policies has created tremendous mistrust and done tremendous harm in those communities. And as such, every police encounter between a white collar and an African-American or Latino suspect doesn't come with a blank slate¹⁴. It comes with the history. It comes with a present. And police agencies have to develop new training protocols¹⁵ that deliberately¹⁶ deal with that. I like to think that we could imagine a situation where these nuisance calls are quite distinctly handled from emergency phone calls, that they might even be channeled to specialized¹⁷ units that have done a little more deeper dive into this problem and can come out and have a conversation with people if they're going to come out at all.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Isn't the base of this, though, especially when we're talking about white people calling the police because they are suspicious of people of color or black people in their communities - isn't the base of this the fact that there is a sort of cultural conversation that says black people in white spaces means there's something criminal going on? You see it in films. You see it in all sorts of different messaging that white people often get. They're afraid when they see something different in spaces that they consider to be their own.

MUHAMMAD: Absolutely. What you're describing there is the longest story of America, which is a story that essentially¹⁸ said that this is a white European's country, and everyone else has to play by our rules, including when your presence is defined on very limited terms. And when you step out of that, which was the story that we know so well in the Jim Crow period, then you're subject to all sorts of sanctions, including death by a lynch mob. And so what I'm trying to suggest here is that we've got to come up with some policies that raise the costs of bad behavior, of treating people differently than you would want to be treated. And that is a problem of white fear being weaponized. And that is a problem of police officers being a little too prickly when people are upset about having been judged harshly or inappropriately.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Khalil Muhammad is a professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard. Thank you very much.

MUHAMMAD: Thank you for having me.

1 implicit   

a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的

参考例句：

• A soldier must give implicit obedience to his officers. 士兵必须绝对服从他的长官。
• Her silence gave implicit consent. 她的沉默表示默许。

2 bias   

n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见

参考例句：

• They are accusing the teacher of political bias in his marking.他们在指控那名教师打分数有政治偏见。
• He had a bias toward the plan.他对这项计划有偏见。

3 insignificant   

adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的

参考例句：

• In winter the effect was found to be insignificant.在冬季，这种作用是不明显的。
• This problem was insignificant compared to others she faced.这一问题与她面临的其他问题比较起来算不得什么。

4 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

5 premises   

n.建筑物，房屋

参考例句：

• According to the rules,no alcohol can be consumed on the premises.按照规定，场内不准饮酒。
• All repairs are done on the premises and not put out.全部修缮都在家里进行，不用送到外面去做。

6 publicity   

n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告

参考例句：

• The singer star's marriage got a lot of publicity.这位歌星的婚事引起了公众的关注。
• He dismissed the event as just a publicity gimmick.他不理会这件事，只当它是一种宣传手法。

7 partisan   

adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒

参考例句：

• In their anger they forget all the partisan quarrels.愤怒之中，他们忘掉一切党派之争。
• The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly towards that region.许多新建的游击队都开始慢慢地向那里移动。

8 evoke   

vt.唤起，引起，使人想起

参考例句：

• These images are likely to evoke a strong response in the viewer.这些图像可能会在观众中产生强烈反响。
• Her only resource was the sympathy she could evoke.她以凭借的唯一力量就是她能从人们心底里激起的同情。

9 elicit   

v.引出,抽出,引起

参考例句：

• It was designed to elicit the best thinking within the government. 机构的设置是为了在政府内部集思广益。
• Don't try to elicit business secrets from me. I won't tell you anything. 你休想从我这里套问出我们的商业机密, 我什么都不会告诉你的。

10 censured   

v.指责，非难，谴责( censure的过去式 )

参考例句：

• They were censured as traitors. 他们被指责为叛徒。 来自辞典例句
• The judge censured the driver but didn't fine him. 法官责备了司机但没罚他款。 来自辞典例句

11 ledger   

n.总帐，分类帐；帐簿

参考例句：

• The young man bowed his head and bent over his ledger again.那个年轻人点头应诺，然后又埋头写起分类帐。
• She is a real accountant who even keeps a detailed household ledger.她不愧是搞财务的，家庭分类账记得清楚详细。

12 punitive   

adj.惩罚的，刑罚的

参考例句：

• They took punitive measures against the whole gang.他们对整帮人采取惩罚性措施。
• The punitive tariff was imposed to discourage tire imports from China.该惩罚性关税的征收是用以限制中国轮胎进口的措施。

13 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

14 slate   

n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订

参考例句：

• The nominating committee laid its slate before the board.提名委员会把候选人名单提交全体委员会讨论。
• What kind of job uses stained wood and slate? 什么工作会接触木头污浊和石板呢？

15 protocols   

n.礼仪( protocol的名词复数 )；（外交条约的）草案；（数据传递的）协议；科学实验报告（或计划）

参考例句：

• There are also protocols on the testing of nuclear weapons. 也有关于核武器试验的协议。 来自辞典例句
• Hardware components and software design of network transport protocols are separately introduced. 介绍系统硬件组成及网络传输协议的软件设计。 来自互联网

16 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

17 specialized   

adj.专门的，专业化的

参考例句：

• There are many specialized agencies in the United Nations.联合国有许多专门机构。
• These tools are very specialized.这些是专用工具。

18 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。