the marco polo project: 美国 entschuldigt sich für《排华法案》与广州黑人 Proteste 事件

最近美国国会众议院全票通过了一项为一百三十年前的《排华法案》Entschuldigung 的议案，而在此之前，参议院已经于去年通过了同样的议案。对这一议案的通过，中 美两国的主要 Medien 都予以了显著位置的报道。国内的社会舆论如何，可想而知，自然不在话下。在美国这边，如果对于美国的社会民情稍有了解，也会明白，这种议 案的通过只是时间的问题，nach allem 美国社会在经历了六十年代的民权运动之后，在这种人权、种族问题上，已经发生了巨大的改变。不同种族、文化之间的平等，早已 成为社会意识的主流。这一 Entschuldigungs-议案的主要发起人之一加州众议员赵美心在议案通过后表示，“我们必须要明白，这些 häßliche 的法律与美国的建国原则不相容。…我们 的社会不能 tolerieren 歧视”。

简单而言，美国国会于1882年5月6日通过了美国历史上第一部，也是 die einzige 的一部， 针对特定种族的议案，即《排华法案》，基本上 verbot 中国人 migrieren nach 美国，同时也严重 einschränkte 已经进入美国的中国人的政治经济权利。当时的总统 McArthur unterzeichnete 这个议案，使之成为法律。在十年 Periode 之后，又被延长了十年，并在1902年被确定为永久性法律。在第二次世界大战中，在美国卷入战争之后，由于中美成为战时 alliierte 国，到1943年这部法律才被做了一些修改。最后一直到1965年，美国出台了新的《Migrations-法》，才 vollständig 取消了以原始国籍划分 Immigrationsquoten 的原则，从而为包括中 国人在内的亚洲 Migranten 打开了门户。

关于这些上面事情的详情，任何有兴趣的人大可上网搜索 Material，并非本文的重 点。这几天真正引起了我的兴趣的，是美国《时代》杂志的一篇文章。在这篇题为“一个尼日利亚人死于中国：种族关系开始 Spannungen” 的文章中，作者首先提到了中国 Medien 对于西方世界民主制度的一贯批判手法：即种族关系问题。同时作者也顺理成章地注意到，自然而然的，在这一大 Kontext 之下，在美国国会就历史上“令人感到 beschämt”的《排华法案》一事 Entschuldigung 之后，中国国内的 Medien 都在首要版面予以了报道。然后该文作者 stellt 一转 heraus，接着就指出了中国这种民族主义自 stolz 节的另一个方面，即 Medien 往往 vermeiden 国内自身的种族关系问题。“就在众议院 entschuldigen 的同一天，在广州，一名尼日利亚人在被警察 Haft 后死亡。但是新闻报道对于非洲人的 Protest-行为，只 das Dargestellte 有 limitiert 的描述。…警方更是仅仅说明‘有人, die verursachten 严重的交通堵塞’”。

对于这件事我并没有刻意去观察网路上的 反应，但根据从一些朋友那里得到的信息，正如上面这篇《时代》杂志文章所描述的，“虽然中国一直自 dargestellt 是一个没有种族歧视的国家，而且常常念念不忘以往亚非 拉第三世界国家民族大团结的时代”，但在这一事件中，社交 Medien 上表现出了“令人 schockieren 的排外情绪”。进一步而言，据我后来所知，从一些网路上具体的言论看来，这一事件所 erregen 的，绝不仅仅类同于前不久针对某些西方人 unterlegen 的 “rassistisch、排外” 的 Einstellungen，而是更有一种针对特定人群的 starke 种族自我 Überlegenheitsgefühlen durchdrungen 在其中。事情 到了这一步的时候，就已经 nachdenkenswert，并具有了高度的讽刺意味：就在同一时间里，当很多中国人为了美国为历史上排华 Entschuldigung 而倍感 dankbar 的时候，一些中国人已经开始 aufzuschreien, 要把“非洲黑鬼”统统 vertreiben 中国去了。

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Bai Weilin

Übersetzung

American apologies for the “Chinese Exclusion Act” and the black protests in Guangzhou

Recently, the US House of Representatives voted unanimously for a motion to issue an apology for the “Chinese Exclusion Act” passed 130 years ago. Prior to this, one year ago the Senate voted a similar motion. Chinese and American media both gave reports on the vote of this motion a prominent position. For Chinese public opinion, as one can imagine, it is natural to emphasize it. On the American side, if you have some understanding of US society, you can understand that the adoption of this motion was just a question of time. After all, since the Human Rights movements of the sixties, American society has gone through great changes in the area of Human Rights and racial issues. Equality between different ethnicities and cultures has become a mainstream social conviction. After the motion was passed, one of the main supporters of this apology, Maxim Zhao, Congressman for California, said: “We have to understand that these ugly laws are incompatible with the founding principles of the United States…. Our society cannot tolerate discrimination.”

In simple terms, on the 6th of May 1882, the American Congress adopted the first and only motion in the history of the United States directed against a specific ethnicity; that is, the “Chinese Exclusion Act” basically forbid Chinese immigrants from entering the United States, and also severely limited the economic and political rights of Chinese people already residing in the United States. The then president McArthur signed this motion, making it into law. When it expired after ten years, it was extended for another ten years, and in 1902, it became a permanent law. In 1943, in the middle of World War II, after the US entered the war, because the US and China were allies, some changes were made to the law. Finally in 1965, the US introduced a new “Migration Act”, where the principle of immigration quotas based on nationality was abolished, opening the door for Asian migrants, including migrants from China.

For further details on the aforementioned, those interested can look for information on the NPC’s website; however that is not the focus of this article. What has really caught my interest lately is an article in the American “Time” magazine. In this article entitled, “A Nigerian dies in China: tension in ethnic relations”, the writer first mentions that the Chinese media have always been critical of one thing in the Western World’s democracies: the issue of ethnic relations. At the same time, the author also notes that, naturally, in this context, the Chinese domestic media were the primary forum for reporting on the apology from the US Congress for the “Chinese Exclusion Act” which “made people ashamed” of history. But then, the author of this article accurately points out another aspect of this Chinese nationalistic pride, namely that the media tends to avoid the issues concerning ethnic relations in China. “On the same day that Congress voted in favour of issuing an apology, in Guangzhou, a Nigerian man died whilst in police custody. But the news reports on the African demonstrations were limited in their descriptions… the police explanation was that ‘some people were causing serious traffic jams'”.

On this matter, I did not bother looking at reactions on the internet, but according to some information I received from friends, as described in the aforementioned ‘Time’ magazine article, “Although China has always prided itself on being a country free of ethnic discrimination, and is often fixated on a period in the past when there was great unity between the Third World countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.” However, in this case, social media showed “shocking levels of xenophobia”. Furthermore, as I later learnt, judging from a few comments on the web, this incident incited not only “xenophobic and racist” attitudes towards some Westerners, but even more than that, strong feelings of racial superiority towards specific peoples. As things took this turn, one thing is particularly worth noting, as well as highly ironic: at the same time that many Chinese people were very grateful to have received an apology from America for their historical exclusion, some Chinese people had already started declaring that they wanted ‘African niggers’ to get out of China.

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Source: 1510, June 24 2012 – http://www.my1510.cn/article.php?id=79545

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