异类之不一样的成功启示录 第195期:非白人混血儿的地位

They lived the much easier life of working in the "house."

她们在房子里工作,

They were the ones most likely to be freed.

享受安逸的生活。

So many mulatto mistresses were left substantial fortunes in the wills of white property owners

她们是那些最像拥有自由的人,所以在很多白人财产拥有者的遗嘱中,都会留给她们大量的财富，

that the Jamaican legislature once passed a law capping bequests at two thousand pounds which, at the time, was an enormous sum.

以致当时的牙买加立法机关通过了一部法律。规定遗产的上限不得超过2000英镑。(在当时这个可是一大笔钱)。

"When a European arrives in the West Indies and gets settled or set down for any length of time,

一个18世纪的观察家写道：“当一个欧洲人来到西印度群岛,定居或者要在那里生活一段时间时,

he finds it necessary to provide himself with a housekeeper or mistress," one eighteenth century observer wrote.

他就会发现必须要找个家庭主妇或者情人。

"The choice he has an opportunity of making is various, a black, a tawney, a mulatto, or a mestee, one of which can be purchased for a hundred or a hundred and fifty sterling...

他有很多选择,黑人、黄种人、黑白混血女人、或是梅斯蒂混血女人,这些都只需要100到150英镑就能买到。

If a young progeny of colored children is brought forth, these are emancipated,

如果那些非白人的小孩出生,他们是不受约束的。”

and mostly sent by their fathers who can afford it at the age of three or four years to be educated in England."

当他们3、4岁时,通常都会被他们那些有能力支付费用的父亲们送到英国接受教育。

This is the world Daisy's grandfather John was born into.

这就是戴西伟大祖父出生的世界。

He was one generation removed from a slave ship, living in a country best described as an African penal colony,

是从奴隶船上下来的一代人,生活在一个被描述作为非洲人刑罚聚居地的国家。

and he was a free man with every benefit of education.

他是个自由人,由于受过教育的益处,

He married another mulatto, a woman who was half European and half Arawak, which is the Indian tribe indigenous to Jamaica, and had seven children.

他娶了一个有一半欧洲血统和一半牙买加印第安土族部落阿拉瓦血统的混血儿,他们有7个孩子。

"These people, the colors, had a lot of status," the Jamaican sociologist Orlando Patterson says.

“这些非白人混血儿很有地位，”牙买加社会学家奥兰多·帕特森说,

"By 1826, they had full civil liberties. In fact, they achieved full civil liberties at the same time as the Jews do in Jamaica.

“在1826年,他们拥有完全的公民自由。实际上,在牙买加他们跟犹太人一样拥有完全的公民自由。

They could vote. Do anything a white person could do, and this is within the context of what was still a slave society.

他们有选举权，在那个还是奴隶社会的背景下,他们能做白人所能做的一切。”