English - The Real Deal

上个周末NBC举办了一台赈灾晚会，众多明星齐上阵，为Hurricane Katrina地区的灾民募捐。黑人歌星Kanye West拒绝读大会事先安排给他的台词，即兴发表了一段语惊四座的话：

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they are looting. If you see a white family, it says they are looking for food. (…) George Bush doesn’t care about black people!

这番话自然引起了激烈的争论。毫不夸张地讲一句：在美国，种族歧视永远是热门话题。

也难怪Kanye West借题发挥。巧合也好，故意也好，媒体的确用loot来描述灾区的黑人，而用look for/find来描述白人。

看看loot的定义：to steal valuables from a place during a time of disorder or confusion, e.g. during wartime or a riot. 也就是我们常说的“趁火打劫”，显然是贬义词。而look for、find甚至take，都是中性词，仅仅描述找、拿等等的动作。同样的行为，黑人是“偷”，白人是“找”，你说公不公平？

Chris Graythen（上面的照片里用finding来描述一对white couple的作者）忍不住跳出来作了解释：

I wrote the caption about the two people who ‘found’ the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not ‘looted’ them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture.

These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow.

I’m not trying to be politically correct. I’m [sic] don’t care if you are white or black. I spent 4 hours on a boat in my parent’s neighborhood shooting, and rescuing people, both black and white, dog and cat. I am a journalist, and a human being - and I see all as such. If you don’t belive me, you can look on Getty today and see the images I shot of real looting today, and you will see white and black people, and they were DEFINATELY [sic] looting. And I put that in the caption.

我相信他的话，我也希望诸多的媒体报道都只是巧合。Katrina已经是天大的悲剧，如果利用这样的事件再来践踏某一类人的话，实在是更大的悲剧。

最后强烈推荐一本好电影：Crash。影片讲的就是美国的种族歧视问题，看完之后我很久都回不过神来。

Bonus video: Green Day - Wake Me Up When September Ends

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2005 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Culture, Buzzword, Language-related News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.