面对种族歧视，美国亚非少数族裔团结发声

霍勒斯·谢菲尔德三世称：“在美国历史上，我们都是受害者，都遭遇了种族歧视，都被视为罪犯，都是美国社会的替罪羊。”

People of African and Asian origins have long shared a cause in a hostile US在充满种族歧视的美国，亚非少数族裔一直都在做着同样的抗争

Helen Zia's childhood memories of events on Aug 28, 1963, have never left her. She was in Washington, DC, on a road trip with her father and a brother. "We were driving through DC on our way back home to New Jersey. I remember looking out the car window at so many black people, wearing their Sunday best clothing", recalls Zia, now long recognized as a campaigner who helped make Asian Americans aware of their rights in a nation where many viewed them with suspicion or hostility.1963年8月28日发生的事深深印在海伦·齐亚的童年记忆中。当时她与父亲和一个兄弟一起公路旅行路过华盛顿特区。齐亚回忆道：“我们在回新泽西州的路上开车穿过华盛顿特区。我记得从车窗望出去，有很多穿着得体的黑人。”齐亚现在是一名帮助亚裔美国人维权的活动家，在这个国家，他们遭受了许多质疑或敌意。

Back then, the 11-year-old had no idea that she was witnessing the largest public protest that the United States would see in the 20th century.当时，11岁的齐亚还不知道，她目睹了美国20世纪最大规模的公众抗议活动。

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, or simply the Great March on Washington as it's known today, drew a quarter of a million people onto the streets demanding civil and economic rights for black Americans.在华盛顿举行的争取就业和自由游行（如今所说的“华盛顿大游行”）吸引了25万人走上街头，为美国黑人争取公民权和经济权。

In the crowd, which extended from the national capital's Lincoln Memorial all the way to the Washington Monument and beyond, were Horace Sheffield Jr, a rising black union leader, and his 9-year-old son Horace Sheffield III. The younger Sheffield is now the executive director of the Detroit Association of Black Organizations, which was set up by his father in 1979 to consolidate the city's groups representing black civil rights struggles.游行队伍从林肯纪念堂一直排到华盛顿纪念碑等地，一个初露头角的黑人工会领袖小霍勒斯·谢菲尔德和他9岁的儿子霍勒斯·谢菲尔德三世也在游行队伍中。谢菲尔德三世现任底特律黑人组织协会执行董事，该协会由其父在1979年成立，旨在团结底特律代表黑人民权斗争的团体。

"A great unifier" was how Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, called the old man, whom she approached exactly two decades after the historic march, in 1983. The previous year, a 27-year-old Chinese American named Vincent Chin was bludgeoned to death in the industrial city by two baseball bat-wielding white autoworkers who reportedly had shouted to him: "It's because of you mother******* we are out of a job!" The abuse hurled at Chin conflated his Asian appearance with a topical issue of the time－the devastating impact the ascendant Japanese car industry was having on the country's "Motor City".齐亚称小霍勒斯·谢菲尔德是“一位伟大的团结者”。齐亚的父母是中国移民。1983年，在“华盛顿大游行”发生整整20年后，齐亚接触到了这位老人。底特律一名27岁的华裔美国人文森特·秦被两名白人汽车工人用棒球棒打死，据报道，他们对他大喊：“因为你，我们失业了！”这两名男子对其高声辱骂是因为将秦的亚裔面孔与当时的一个热门话题联系在一起，即崛起的日本汽车工业对美国“汽车城”底特律的毁灭性冲击。

After pleading guilty to manslaughter, the two men were sentenced to three years' probation and a $3,000 fine by a county judge who saw no racial motivation in the killing. With the killers never seeing a prison cell, a group of mostly young people quickly came together to form the American Citizens for Justice, the first explicitly pan-Asian grassroots community advocacy group with a national scope. Zia was its press secretary.一名镇法官以过失杀人罪对两名男子判处缓刑三年，3000美元罚款，该法官认为两人没有种族主义杀人动机。由于凶手没有受到严惩，一群年轻人很快聚集在一起，组成了美国公民正义组织，这是第一个明确的全国范围的泛亚洲平民群体倡议组织。齐亚是该组织的新闻发言人。

"We immediately reached out to Detroit's black community, within which there's a deep understanding of what racism meant in America and for which Sheffield Jr was a godfather figure," she said. "A generation older, he came to our meetings where we made it very clear that this was not just about Asian Americans. He opened many doors for us, including to the powerful United Auto Workers union where part of the anti-Asian hate originated as a result of the huge layoffs from the production lines."齐亚说：“我们立即联系了底特律的黑人团体，他们对美国的种族歧视有着深刻的理解，小谢菲尔德是他们的领袖。他比我们年长一代，他参加了我们的会议，我们在会上明确表示，这不仅仅是亚裔美国人的问题。他为我们打开了许多方便之门，包括势力庞大的美国汽车工人联合会。由于汽车生产线的大规模裁员，部分反亚裔仇恨源自该工会。”

One of the questions raised during the encounters was whether Asian Americans had experienced genuine racism. "Those who thought Asian Americans had no legitimate place in the discussion of racism knew no history," said Horace Sheffield III, who recalled how his great-grandmother was freed from slavery at the age of 12 and how his grandparents, in fear of violence, fled Georgia in a Detroit-bound train.这次会面中提出的问题之一是亚裔美国人是否经历过真正的种族歧视。霍勒斯·谢菲尔德三世称：“那些认为亚裔美国人在种族问题中没有发言权的人不了解历史。”他回忆起他的曾祖母在12岁时从奴隶制中解放出来，他的祖父母因躲避暴力而乘坐火车从佐治亚州逃到底特律。

For him, the parallels are remarkable. After the US made it illegal to import enslaved people from Africa in 1808, hundreds of thousands of indentured workers－"surrogate slaves" as Zia would call them－were brought in, sometimes forcibly, from Asia. Most came from China and India. During the ensuing "driving out" period, Chinese immigrants, seen as threatening to the white-dominated social order as the newly freed slaves, were subjected to massacres and lynching all too familiar to black people. By the time the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was passed to prevent－for the only time in US history－all members of a specific ethnic or national group from entering the country, what's known as the Jim Crow laws were being implemented in the southern states to enforce racial segregation. In practice, this meant Asians and black people were often lumped together.对他来说，黑人和亚洲人在美国的遭遇惊人地相似。1808年，美国宣布购买非奴违法之后，开始从亚洲引进数十万劳工，齐亚称之为“奴隶代替者”。他们大多数来自中国和印度，有些人是被迫的。在随后的“排华浪潮”中，作为新解放的奴隶，中国移民被视为对白人主导的社会秩序构成威胁，遭到了屠杀和私刑，这些经历也是黑人所熟悉的。1882年，美国通过了《排华法案》，这是美国历史上唯一通过的防止某一特定族裔或族群的所有成员入境的法案。此时，美国南方各州正在实施所谓的《吉姆·克劳法》，强制实行种族隔离制度。这说明亚洲人和黑人实际上往往是站在一条船上。

"We were both victimized, racialized and criminalized throughout US history, the whipping boys and girls of the American society," said Horace Sheffield III.霍勒斯·谢菲尔德三世称：“在美国历史上，我们都是受害者，都遭遇了种族歧视，都被视为罪犯，都是美国社会的替罪羊。”