演讲MP3+双语文稿:被遗忘的工人阶级
听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿，供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:被遗忘的工人阶级，希望你会喜欢！
【演讲者及介绍】J.D. Vance
J.D.万斯-作家前海军陆战队和耶鲁法学院毕业生J.D. Vance写了关于向上流动的真实感受。
【演讲主题】美国被遗忘的工人阶级
America's forgotten working class
【中英文字幕】
翻译者 Alvin Lee 校对者 Tingting Zhong
00:00
I remember the very first time I went to a nice restaurant, a really nice restaurant. It was for a law firm recruitment dinner, and I remember beforehand the waitress walked around and asked whether we wanted some wine, so I said, "Sure, I'll take some white wine."
我还记得第一次走进一家很棒的餐厅，非常高档。那是一家律师事务所的招新晚宴，正式开始前，服务生四处游走，询问客人是否需要来点葡萄酒，我说，“好吧，给我来点白葡萄酒。”
00:14
And she immediately said, "Would you like sauvignon blanc or chardonnay?"
她马上问我，“您是想要白苏维翁还是霞多丽？”
00:19
And I remember thinking, "Come on, lady, stop with the fancy French words and just give me some white wine." But I used my powers of deduction and recognized that chardonnay and sauvignon blanc were two separate types of white wine, and so I told her that I would take the chardonnay, because frankly that was the easiest one to pronounce for me.
我当时想，“天哪，姐们儿，别整这些 高大上的法语词了行吗，给我一杯白葡萄酒就好了。” 但我发挥了自己杰出的推理能力 猜测霞多丽和白苏维翁 应该是两种不同的白葡萄酒，于是我要了霞多丽，因为这个词更好发音。
00:39
So I had a lot of experiences like that during my first couple of years as a law student at Yale, because, despite all outward appearances, I'm a cultural outsider. I didn't come from the elites. I didn't come from the Northeast or from San Francisco. I came from a southern Ohio steel town, and it's a town that's really struggling in a lot of ways, ways that are indicative of the broader struggles of America's working class. Heroin has moved in, killing a lot of people, people I know. Family violence, domestic violence, and divorce have torn apart families. And there's a very unique sense of pessimism that's moved in. Think about rising mortality rates in these communities and recognize that for a lot of these folks, the problems that they're seeing are actually causing rising death rates in their own communities, so there's a very real sense of struggle.
这样的经历还有很多，尤其是在我在耶鲁大学念法律的头几年，因为我不是他们圈子里的人，尽管看起来挺像，但我出身平凡。不是东北那一带的人，也不是旧金山人。我的老家是俄亥俄州南部一个钢铁小镇，它一直在挣扎求生，那种挣扎彷徨，就像美国工人阶级 如今的处境一般。海洛因泛滥，很多人因此丧生，其中有我的熟人。家庭暴力和离婚 导致许多家庭支离破碎。有一种特别悲观的情绪蔓延开来。死亡率不断升高，很多人都意识到这一点，而他们亲眼见到的问题 正是导致社区死亡率升高的原因，这种挣扎彷徨的感受是如此真切。
01:31
I had a very front-row seat to that struggle. My family has been part of that struggle for a very long time. I come from a family that doesn't have a whole lot of money. The addiction that plagued my community also plagued my family, and even, sadly, my own mom. There were a lot of problems that I saw in my own family, problems caused sometimes by a lack of money, problems caused sometimes by a lack of access to resources and social capital that really affected my life.
而我正是这种感受的亲历者。我的家庭长期以来 一直经历着这种彷徨挣扎。我生于一个不甚富裕的家庭。而在我们社区蔓延的毒品问题 同样伤害到了我的家庭，很不幸，是我的母亲。我亲眼见到了家里的很多问题，这些问题的起因，有的是因为缺钱，有的是因为缺乏社会资源和人脉，而这对我的影响很大。
02:04
If you had looked at my life when I was 14 years old and said, "Well, what's going to happen to this kid?" you would have concluded that I would have struggled with what academics call upward mobility. So upward mobility is an abstract term, but it strikes at something that's very core at the heart of the American Dream. It's the sense, and it measures whether kids like me who grow up in poor communities are going to live a better life, whether they're going to have a chance to live a materially better existence, or whether they're going to stay in the circumstances where they came from. And one of the things we've learned, unfortunately, is that upward mobility isn't as high as we'd like it to be in this country, and interestingly, it's very geographically distributed. So take Utah, for instance. In Utah a poor kid is actually doing OK, very likely to live their share and their part in the American Dream. But if you think of where I'm from, in the South, in Appalachia, in southern Ohio, it's very unlikely that kids like that will rise. The American Dream in those parts of the country is in a very real sense just a dream.
如果你见过我14岁时过得怎么样，并问到，“这孩子将来会怎么样？” 你也许会认为我会挣扎着往上爬，学术界管这叫“向上流动”。向上流动是一个抽象的术语，但它触及到了美国梦 最核心的部分。它是一个标准，能衡量那些像我一样 家境贫寒的孩子，能不能过上好日子，是不是有机会过上衣食无忧的生活，还是说会继续贫穷下去。但不幸的是，我们了解到，在美国，向上流动并没有 我们想象的那么容易，而且有趣的是，它跟地域有很大的关系。就拿犹他州来说，在犹他州，一个穷孩子可能会过得还好，很有可能在美国梦中找到自己的位置。但如果在我的家乡，南部的一些州，阿巴拉契亚地区，俄亥俄州南部，穷孩子可能就没什么出路。从某种意义上来说，美国梦在这些地方 可能真的就只是个梦。
03:15
So why is that happening? So one reason is obviously economic or structural. So you think of these areas. They're beset by these terrible economic trends, built around industries like coal and steel that make it harder for folks to get ahead. That's certainly one problem. There's also the problem of brain drain, where the really talented people, because they can't find high-skilled work at home, end up moving elsewhere, so they don't build a business or non-profit where they're from, they end up going elsewhere and taking their talents with them. There are failing schools in a lot of these communities, failing to give kids the educational leg up that really makes it possible for kids to have opportunities later in life. These things are all important. I don't mean to discount these structural barriers. But when I look back at my life and my community, something else was going on, something else mattered. It's difficult to quantify, but it was no less real.
为什么会这样呢？ 一个原因显然是跟经济或结构有关。看看这些地区。它们的经济趋势很不好，当年依靠煤炭和钢铁起家，这些产业如今已经没落。这肯定是原因之一。还有一个问题就是人才流失，很多有才华的人，因为在家乡找不到有技术含量的工作，只能远走他乡，他们无法在老家创业或造福社会，就只能带着自己的才华远赴他乡。这些地区有很多衰败的学校，无法给予孩子们更好的教育，因此无法帮助他们在未来占得先机。这些事都很重要。我并不是说要忽视 （之前提到的）结构壁垒。但是当我回首人生，回想我们社区的时候，发现还有一些其他的事情也与之有关。这些事情很难量化，但是却真实存在。
04:08
So for starters, there was a very real sense of hopelessness in the community that I grew up in. There was a sense that kids had that their choices didn't matter. No matter what happened, no matter how hard they worked, no matter how hard they tried to get ahead, nothing good would happen. So that's a tough feeling to grow up around. That's a tough mindset to penetrate, and it leads sometimes to very conspiratorial places. So let's just take one political issue that's pretty hot, affirmative action. So depending on your politics, you might think that affirmative action is either a wise or an unwise way to promote diversity in the workplace or the classroom. But if you grow up in an area like this, you see affirmative action as a tool to hold people like you back. That's especially true if you're a member of the white working class. You see it as something that isn't just about good or bad policy. You see it as something that's actively conspiring, where people with political and financial power are working against you. And there are a lot of ways that you see that conspiracy against you -- perceived, real, but it's there, and it warps expectations.
首先，在我成长的社区，你能真切感受到那种无望的氛围。孩子们觉得自己的选择毫无意义。无论他们如何努力，如何努力向前，结果都是一样。这种消极的情绪四处蔓延。命定论甚嚣尘上，甚至有点阴谋论的感觉。以非常热门的一个政治话题为例，平权法案。根据政治观点（不同），你也许会认为平权法案 在推动工作场所或者学校的多样性上 是明智的或者不明智的。但如果你成长于这样的社区，你可能会把平权法案看作是一种限制。尤其当你是白人工人阶级的一员时。在你眼里，它不再简单的 是一个好政策或者坏政策。你会把它看成是 那些握有政治或财政大权的人 来压迫你的工具。你可以从不同角度 来看待这种针对你的阴谋论—— 可察觉的，真实的，但它确实存在，而且会扭曲你的期望。
05:19
So if you think about what do you do when you grow up in that world, you can respond in a couple of ways. One, you can say, "I'm not going to work hard, because no matter how hard I work, it's not going to matter." Another thing you might do is say, "Well, I'm not going to go after the traditional markers of success, like a university education or a prestigious job, because the people who care about those things are unlike me. They're never going to let me in." When I got admitted to Yale, a family member asked me if I had pretended to be a liberal to get by the admissions committee. Seriously. And it's obviously not the case that there was a liberal box to check on the application, but it speaks to a very real insecurity in these places that you have to pretend to be somebody you're not to get past these various social barriers. It's a very significant problem.
想象一下，成长在 那样的环境中，你该怎么办，可能应对方法有很多种。第一种，你可以说，“我才不会努力奋斗，因为无论怎样努力，结果都一样。” 而另一种方式就是，“好吧，我不会追求传统意义上的成功，比如上大学，或者找份体面的工作，因为重视这些事的人跟我不是一类人，他们不会接纳我。” 当我被耶鲁大学录取后，一个亲戚问我，我是不是假装成民主党成员，来获得招生委员会的认可。真事儿。入学申请表上当然没有 “民主党成员”这个选项 让你勾选，但这件事道出了一个事实，就是我们那里非常缺乏安全感，你需要伪装成另一种人，才能越过重重社会壁垒。这是一个非常重要的问题。
06:05
Even if you don't give in to that hopelessness, even if you think, let's say, that your choices matter and you want to make the good choices, you want to do better for yourself and for your family, it's sometimes hard to even know what those choices are when you grow up in a community like I did. I didn't know, for example, that you had to go to law school to be a lawyer. I didn't know that elite universities, as research consistently tells us, are cheaper for low-income kids because these universities have bigger endowments, can offer more generous financial aid. I remember I learned this when I got the financial aid letter from Yale for myself, tens of thousands of dollars in need-based aid, which is a term I had never heard before. But I turned to my aunt when I got that letter and said, "You know, I think this just means that for the first time in my life, being poor has paid really well."
即便你没有感到无望，即使你坚定的认为，你的选择是有意义的，你想做出好的选择，你想为了自己和家庭努力奋斗，但生长在我那样的社区，你甚至都不知道有哪些路可以选。像我小时候，不知道想成为律师，要先上法学院。不知道一流的大学 ——像研究结果不断表明的那样—— 对于贫困的孩子收费要低，因为好大学得到的捐款更多，可以给学生更多资助。直到我收到耶鲁大学的助学津贴信，我才知道有这么回事，那是上万美元的按需资助，我以前连听都没听过。我拿着信对我阿姨说，“这是我有生以来第一次，因为穷得到的实惠。”
06:55
So I didn't have access to that information because the social networks around me didn't have access to that information. I learned from my community how to shoot a gun, how to shoot it well. I learned how to make a damn good biscuit recipe. The trick, by the way, is frozen butter, not warm butter. But I didn't learn how to get ahead. I didn't learn how to make the good decisions about education and opportunity that you need to make to actually have a chance in this 21st century knowledge economy. Economists call the value that we gain from our informal networks, from our friends and colleagues and family "social capital." The social capital that I had wasn't built for 21st century America, and it showed.
我之前不了解这方面的信息，是因为我周围的圈子 都不知道这些信息。我从社区学到的是 如何开枪，如何打得准。我学到的是如何做好吃的饼干。顺便提一句，诀窍就是，用冰冻的黄油，不要用加热的。但我不知道如何出人头地。不知道在关键时刻如何抉择，比如选择大学，面临机遇，怎样才能做出对的选择，从而在21世纪这个 知识经济时代赢得一席之地。经济学家将我们从 人脉圈子中获取的价值，比如朋友、同事和家人，叫做“社会资本”。而我过去的社会资本根本 不适用于21世纪的美国，事实也证明了这一点。
07:38
There's something else that's really important that's going on that our community doesn't like to talk about, but it's very real. Working-class kids are much more likely to face what's called adverse childhood experiences, which is just a fancy word for childhood trauma: getting hit or yelled at, put down by a parent repeatedly, watching someone hit or beat your parent, watching someone do drugs or abuse alcohol. These are all instances of childhood trauma, and they're pretty commonplace in my family. Importantly, they're not just commonplace in my family right now. They're also multigenerational. So my grandparents, the very first time that they had kids, they expected that they were going to raise them in a way that was uniquely good. They were middle class, they were able to earn a good wage in a steel mill. But what ended up happening is that they exposed their kids to a lot of the childhood trauma that had gone back many generations. My mom was 12 when she saw my grandma set my grandfather on fire. His crime was that he came home drunk after she told him, "If you come home drunk, I'm gonna kill you." And she tried to do it. Think about the way that that affects a child's mind.
还有一些非常重要的事情 我们的社区不愿意谈起，但它们又真实存在。工人阶级的孩子更多的 要面临所谓的“不利的童年经历”，其实这就是对童年创伤 一种比较委婉的说法： 被家长不停打骂和惩罚，目睹他人殴打自己的父母，目睹别人吸毒或者酗酒。这都是童年创伤的例子，在我家这些现象很常见。重要的是，这种情况不是现在才有。而是延续了好几代人。我的外公外婆，在他们刚有了孩子的时候，他们原本也期望用好的方法 将孩子养育成人。他们曾属于中产阶级，在炼钢厂有不错的薪水。但结果却是 他们给孩子们带来了许多童年创伤，跟早几代人的处境没什么区别。我母亲12岁那年，看见我外婆在我外公身上点火，就因为他喝得醉醺醺地回家，而外婆事先警告过他，“如果你喝醉酒回家，我就要杀了你。” 结果，她真的试着这么做了。想想这样的事会对孩子的心灵 产生怎样的影响。
08:53
And we think of these things as especially rare, but a study by the Wisconsin Children's Trust Fund found that 40 percent of low-income kids face multiple instances of childhood trauma, compared to only 29 percent for upper-income kids. And think about what that really means. If you're a low-income kid, almost half of you face multiple instances of childhood trauma. This is not an isolated problem. This is a very significant issue.
我们可能会认为这只是个别现象，但威斯康辛儿童信托基金的研究表明，低收入家庭的孩子遭受 多种童年创伤的几率为40%，而高收入家庭的孩子为29%。想想这意味着什么。如果你们都生在低收入家庭，你们中间差不多会有 一半的人会遭遇多种童年创伤。这不是一个孤立的问题。非常值得我们注意。
09:23
We know what happens to the kids who experience that life. They're more likely to do drugs, more likely to go to jail, more likely to drop out of high school, and most importantly, they're more likely to do to their children what their parents did to them. This trauma, this chaos in the home, is our culture's very worst gift to our children, and it's a gift that keeps on giving.
我们都清楚，这样的孩子会经历怎样的人生。他们很可能会吸毒，会进监狱，会从高中辍学，最重要的是，他们很可能会在自己的孩子身上 重复父母对自己的所作所为。这种伤害，这种家庭的混乱，是我们的文化给孩子最糟糕的礼物，而这种礼物还在不停地被送出。
09:50
So you combine all that, the hopelessness, the despair, the cynicism about the future, the childhood trauma, the low social capital, and you begin to understand why me, at the age of 14, was ready to become just another statistic, another kid who failed to beat the odds.
把这些都加在一起，无望，绝望，对未来的怀疑，童年的创伤，低社会资本，你就会了解，为什么我 在14岁那年，几乎就要成为又一个例子，被这些壁垒困死的又一个孩子。
10:10
But something unexpected happened. I did beat the odds. Things turned up for me. I graduated from high school, from college, I went to law school, and I have a pretty good job now. So what happened?
但意料之外的事情发生了。我冲破了这些壁垒。事情出现了转机。我念完高中，上了大学，进入法学院，找到了一份不错的工作。究竟发生了什么呢？
10:25
Well, one thing that happened is that my grandparents, the same grandparents of setting someone on fire fame, they really shaped up by the time I came around. They provided me a stable home, a stable family. They made sure that when my parents weren't able to do the things that kids need, they stepped in and filled that role. My grandma especially did two things that really matter. One, she provided that peaceful home that allowed me to focus on homework and the things that kids should be focused on. But she was also this incredibly perceptive woman, despite not even having a middle school education. She recognized the message that my community had for me, that my choices didn't matter, that the deck was stacked against me. She once told me, "JD, never be like those losers who think the deck is stacked against them. You can do anything you want to."
首先是我的外公外婆，就是尝试在人身上点火的外公外婆，在我出生之后，改过自新了。他们给了我一个稳定的家，稳定的家庭。他们竭尽全力，在我的父母无法尽到责任时，他们能及时出现，顶替父母的角色。我的外婆做了2件非常重要的事。第一，她创造了和平的 家庭环境，让我专心做功课，专心做孩子应该做的事情。而且她是一位洞察力极强的女性，尽管连中学都没有上过。她察觉到了社区 对我产生的不良影响，就是我们的选择毫无意义，我们面前有重重阻碍。有一次她告诉我，“JD，不要像那些没出息的人一样，觉得整个世界都在跟他们作对。你可以做成任何想做的事情。”
11:12
And yet she recognized that life wasn't fair. It's hard to strike that balance, to tell a kid that life isn't fair, but also recognize and enforce in them the reality that their choices matter. But mamaw was able to strike that balance.
尽管她知道生活是不公平的。要打破这种平衡非常难，要告诉一个孩子生活不公平也非常难。但即使这样，也要告诉孩子，他们的选择是有意义的。但是外婆能打破这种平衡。
11:29
The other thing that really helped was the United States Marine Corps. So we think of the Marine Corps as a military outfit, and of course it is, but for me, the US Marine Corps was a four-year crash course in character education. It taught me how to make a bed, how to do laundry, how to wake up early, how to manage my finances. These are things my community didn't teach me. I remember when I went to go buy a car for the very first time, I was offered a dealer's low, low interest rate of 21.9 percent, and I was ready to sign on the dotted line. But I didn't take that deal, because I went and took it to my officer who told me, "Stop being an idiot, go to the local credit union, and get a better deal." And so that's what I did. But without the Marine Corps, I would have never had access to that knowledge. I would have had a financial calamity, frankly.
另一个帮到我的就是美国海军陆战队。我们认为海军陆战队 是一个军事单位，它当然是，但对我而言，美国海军陆战队 是一次长达4年的，性格教育课程。它教会我如何铺床，怎么洗衣，怎么早起，怎么规划自己的开销。这些都是社区没有教我的东西。我还记得第一次去买车，一个经销商给了我非常非常 “低”的贷款利息，21.9%，我都准备签合同了。但我最后没有签，因为我把合同拿给我的长官看，他告诉我，“别傻了，去找本地的信贷联盟，拿一个更好的价。” 我照做了。如果没有海军陆战队，我可能永远也没法了解这个知识。我可能还会遭遇财政危机。
12:14
The last thing I want to say is that I had a lot of good fortune in the mentors and people who have played an important role in my life. From the Marines, from Ohio State, from Yale, from other places, people have really stepped in and ensured that they filled that social capital gap that it was pretty obvious, apparently, that I had. That comes from good fortune, but a lot of children aren't going to have that good fortune, and I think that raises really important questions for all of us about how we're going to change that. We need to ask questions about how we're going to give low-income kids who come from a broken home access to a loving home. We need to ask questions about how we're going to teach low-income parents how to better interact with their children, with their partners. We need to ask questions about how we give social capital, mentorship to low-income kids who don't have it. We need to think about how we teach working class children about not just hard skills, like reading, mathematics, but also soft skills, like conflict resolution and financial management.
最后我还想说，我非常幸运 能遇见很多很好的导师和人，他们在我生命中扮演了 非常重要的角色。在海军陆战队，在俄亥俄州，在耶鲁大学，在其他地方，大家都走近我，帮我填满那条社会资本的鸿沟，这条鸿沟在我身上表现得很明显。这是一种很大的幸运，但是很多孩子都没有这样的好运，这就为我们引出了非常重要的问题，那就是该如何改变这一点。我们要思考如何帮助 那些低收入家庭的孩子，让他们破碎的家庭重新充满爱。我们要思考 如何教育低收入的父母 同自己的孩子，同自己的爱人，更好地互动。我们要思考如何为贫穷的孩子，提供社会资本和引导。我们要思考如何教育工人阶级的孩子，不仅仅是硬技能，比如阅读，数学，还有软技能，比如危机处理和理财。
13:21
Now, I don't have all of the answers. I don't know all of the solutions to this problem, but I do know this: in southern Ohio right now, there's a kid who is anxiously awaiting their dad, wondering whether, when he comes through the door, he'll walk calmly or stumble drunkly. There's a kid whose mom sticks a needle in her arm and passes out, and he doesn't know why she doesn't cook him dinner, and he goes to bed hungry that night. There's a kid who has no hope for the future but desperately wants to live a better life. They just want somebody to show it to them. I don't have all the answers, but I know that unless our society starts asking better questions about why I was so lucky and about how to get that luck to more of our communities and our country's children, we're going to continue to have a very significant problem.
现在，我并没有所有这些问题的答案。我也不知该如何彻底解决这些问题，但我明确知道的是： 现在，在南俄亥俄州，有孩子在焦急等待自己的父亲，在想着，当他走进家门的时候，是正常的，还是喝得东倒西歪的。有的孩子 看着自己的母亲往胳膊里扎针，然后失去知觉，他不明白为什么妈妈不给自己做饭，只好饿着肚子爬上床。有的孩子对未来不抱希望，但又非常想过上更好的生活。他们需要有人教他们怎么做。我没有所有的答案，但我知道，除非整个社会开始思考 为什么我如此幸运，如何让更多的社区，让更多的孩子得到这份幸运，否则我们将会 不断遇到非常严重的问题。
14:21
Thank you.
谢谢大家。
14:22
(Applause)
（掌声）
