One of the first English words I learned was an ethnic slur I heard whenever my parents and I walked around the city. I was 7 years old and had just moved to Brooklyn from China. One day, eager to show off, I turned to my father and declared, 「We are chinks now!」 in English. My father looked as if I had stabbed him. In a grave, low voice he told me to never utter that word again.
我最早學到的英語單詞之一是每當我和父母走在城裡時都會聽到的種族侮辱語。我當時七歲，剛剛從中國搬到布魯克林。有一天，急於炫耀的我向父親用英語宣稱：「我們現在是中國佬了！」父親看上去好像被我捅了一刀。他用嚴肅低沉的聲音告訴我，再也不許說這個詞。
That slur has haunted me throughout my life, cutting like a knife when I least expect it. A boy on a bike once screamed it so deep into my ear that it rang for hours afterward. The ringing eventually subsided, but the street harassment became a regular fixture in my life.
那個詞一直困擾著我，總在我最不經意的時候像刀子一般划過。曾經有一個騎自行車的男孩直衝著我的耳朵喊出這個詞，我的耳朵嗡嗡響了幾個小時。聲音最終消失了，但遭受街頭騷擾成了我生活中的常態。
Before the pandemic, the simple act of walking to the courthouse where I work demanded exhaustive control of my body. For a while I tried very hard to make myself look less feminine and more white. I』d pretend to be deaf when strangers addressed me with their eyes pulled back into a slant while taunting 「Me love you long time」 or loudly said they had 「yellow fever.」
大流行之前，就連步行去我工作的法院，都需要我極力控制自己的身體。有一段時間，我竭力使自己看起來不那么女性化，而且更像白人。當陌生人把眼睛向斜後方拉長，用「我愛你很久」（Me love you long time，是對亞洲女性的羞辱短語。——編注）奚落我，或者大聲說他們得了「黃熱病」時，我會假裝聽不見。
As the coronavirus spread, I began to dread my commute to work. People made a show of keeping away from me even in crowded subway train cars. Other times, the harassment was more overt — strangers bumped their shoulders into me; someone jabbed me with the pointy metal end of a long umbrella while shouting, 「Go back to China.」 My parents wore hats, sunglasses and double masks whenever they left the house.
隨著新冠病毒的傳播，我開始害怕上下班的路程。即使在擁擠的地鐵車廂裡，人們也表現出遠離我的樣子。其他時候，騷擾更加明目張胆——陌生人用肩膀撞我；有人用長雨傘的金屬尖頭捅我，喊著「滾回中國去」。父母每次出門都帶著帽子、墨鏡和雙層口罩。
The last time I took the train to work, in March, a man put his face inches away from mine and shouted 「chink」 while looking me dead in the eyes. Not one person came to my defense. The slur rang through my ears, transporting me back to my childhood. I haven’t set foot on a train or a bus since.
我最後一次坐地鐵上班是在去年3月，一個男人把他的臉湊到我面前幾英寸的地方，死死盯著我，嘴裡喊著「中國佬」。沒有人為我說話。那個詞在我耳邊迴響，把我帶回童年。從那以後，我再也沒有坐過地鐵或者巴士。
I’m far from alone. The United States has had a surge in violence against Asian-Americans during the pandemic. Between March and December 2020, Stop AAPI Hate, an initiative that tracks and responds to reported incidents of violence and discrimination directed at Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, received more than 2,800 reports of incidents against Asian-Americans. Stop AAPI Hate also found that women are twice as likely as men to report coronavirus-related harassment.
還有很多人和我一樣。大流行期間，在美國，針對亞裔美國人的暴力激增。在2020年3月至12月期間，追蹤和回應針對亞裔美國人和太平洋島民的暴力與歧視事件的組織Stop AAPI Hate收到了超過2800例針對亞裔美國人的事件報告。Stop AAPI Hate還發現，報告和新冠病毒相關騷擾的女性是男性的兩倍。
Though Anti-Asian sentiment has increased during the pandemic, it is woven into the very fabric of this country. The Page Act of 1875 effectively barred Chinese women, who were believed to spread sexual disease and to pose a threat to white values, lives and futures, from entering the country. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which was signed into law in 1882, was the first and only enacted legislation to prohibit immigration of all individuals of a particular national origin. The exclusion laws weren’t repealed until 1943, when Congress established an immigration quota for China of about 105 visas per year.
儘管反亞裔情緒在大流行期間有所增加，但它早已融入美國的社會結構。1875年的《佩奇法案》(Page Act)實際上禁止了中國女性進入美國，因為她們被認為傳播性疾病，並對白人價值觀、生命和未來構成威脅。《排華法案》(Chinese Exclusion Act)於1882年籤署成為法律，是第一部也是唯一一部禁止全體特定國籍者移民的立法。直到1943年，國會制定了每年大約105個籤證的中國移民配額，才廢除了這項排外法案。
The country’s legal framework dehumanized Asian immigrants, and in turn emboldened Americans to brutalize us. In the Chinese Massacre of 1871, a white mob hanged nearly 20 Chinese immigrants in makeshift gallows in Los Angeles. In 1930, hundreds of white men roamed the streets of Watsonville, Calif., terrorizing Filipino farmworkers for days before killing a man. After Pearl Harbor, an angry nation used Japanese-Americans as a scapegoat. After the Vietnam War, the Ku Klux Klan tried to drive Vietnamese-Americans out of Texas by burning their houses and boats — a symptom of anti-Vietnamese sentiment across the country.
美國的法律框架不把亞洲移民當人對待，反過來又縱容美國人有恃無恐地殘害我們。在1871年的華人大屠殺中，一名白人暴徒在洛杉磯臨時改裝的絞刑架上吊死了近20名中國移民。1930年，數百名白人衝上加利福尼亞州沃森維爾的街道，連續數天恐嚇菲律賓農場工人，隨後殺死一名男子。珍珠港事件發生後，憤怒的美國把日裔美國人當作替罪羊。越南戰爭結束後，三K黨試圖通過燒毀房屋和船隻將越南裔美國人驅逐出得州——這是全國各地反越南情緒的體現。
The recent spate of attacks is targeting the most vulnerable members of our community. Two assailants slapped an 89-year-old woman in the face and set her shirt on fire in Brooklyn last fall. In January, an 84-year-old man died after he was brutally attacked while on a morning walk in San Francisco. This week a 52-year-old woman waiting in line outside a bakery in Flushing, Queens, was rushed to the hospital after she was violently shoved and blacked out.
最近發生的一系列攻擊是針對我們社區中最脆弱的成員。去年秋天，在布魯克林，兩名襲擊者掌摑一名89歲女性，並將其襯衫點燃。1月在舊金山，一名84歲的男性在早晨散步時遭到殘暴的襲擊後身亡。本周，一名52歲的女性在皇后區法拉盛一家麵包店外排隊等候時遭暴力推搡，暈倒後被緊急送往醫院。
Many seem intent on ignoring our pain, marking us with the broad stroke of the condescending model-minority brush. They normalize racism against Asian-Americans, and allowed our former president to incite hatred using racist language like 「Kung flu」 and 「China plague.」
許多人似乎有意忽略我們的痛苦，傲慢地大筆一揮就把我們標記為模範少數族裔。他們將針對亞裔美國人的種族主義正常化，並允許我們的前總統用「功夫流感」和「中國瘟疫」之類的種族主義語言來煽動仇恨。
At work, my boss accused me of being 「oversensitive,」 of making things about race that aren’t. I have been told that Asian-Americans don’t experience racism. I half-believed it, thinking that I was taking things too personally, being too weak — too 「Asian.」 When I said that my former law firm needed to do more than pay lip service to the Black Lives Matter movement, the same boss, a white man who used the term 「open kimono」 in business meetings, dismissed the idea and declared that I, as an Asian-American, had it so much better than 「them.」
在工作中，老闆指責我「過於敏感」，覺得什麼事都和種族有關。有人告訴我，亞裔美國人不會遭受種族主義。我半信半疑，以為自己把這些事情太當回事，太脆弱——太「亞洲人」。在我的上一家律師事務所，當我說律所為「黑人的命也是命」(Black Lives Matter)運動所做的不應該僅限於動動嘴皮子的時候，同一個老闆——一個在商務會議上使用「敞開和服」（open kimono，意為開誠布公，亮出底牌，帶有種族主義和性別歧視色彩——編注）這個詞的白人男性——駁回了這個觀點，並宣稱我這個亞裔美國人過得比「他們」好多了。
As long as white supremacy is permitted to perpetuate a divide between Asian-Americans and Black and Indigenous people and other people of color, we can make no real progress against our common oppressor: the systems in our country that were designed to shut us all out.
只要白人至上主義使得亞裔美國人、黑人和原住民以及其他有色人種之間的鴻溝永久存在，我們就無法取得真正的進展，去對抗我們共同的壓迫者：那就是我們的國家旨在將我們拒之門外的制度。
In 1992, my father left his job as a professor in China in pursuit of the rights and equality touted by our nation’s founders. Nearly three decades later, he hesitates each time he leaves his home. And yet, when I asked him about it over Lunar New Year, he showed no signs of resignation, choosing to believe instead that things will get better. As he often said to me growing up, no matter what came our way: America can be good.
1992年，為了追求美國開國元勳宣揚的權利與平等，父親辭去了在中國的教授職位。將近三十年後，他每次離家出門都會猶豫。但是，春節期間，當我問起他這件事，他沒有表現出放棄的跡象，而是選擇相信情況會好起來。正如在我成長過程中，不管遇到什麼，他總是對我說：美國一定會好的。