工人阶级白人之所以会投靠民粹主义者,是因为民粹主义者给了他们久违的尊重。既然政治正确最基本的诉求是平等地尊重所有群体,那么我们就不该遗忘工人阶级白人。
测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识:
chasten ['tʃeɪsn] vt. 改正、磨炼
anodyne ['ænədaɪn] n. 止痛药,安慰物
pummel ['pʌml] v. 接连地打,打击
visceral ['vɪsərəl] adj. 内脏的,发自肺腑的
apartheid [ə'pɑːtaɪt] n. 种族隔离
denizen ['denɪzn] n. 居民,栖息者
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When I started university in Britain in 1988, political correctness didn't exist. If a woman tried to speak at a students' meeting, the cry would go up, “Get your tits out for the lads!” The ritual climax of bar conversations was a double entendre about homosexuality. But, in 1993, I went to study in the US and discovered PC.The American students I met didn't make racist, sexist or homophobic jokes. When I returned home and told British friends about this strange new world, they explained that it was because Americans were humourless. This wasn't actually true. The Americans were much funnier than the Brits with their eternal gay jokes.
The attempt to shut out any views deemed undesirable has since got out of hand on some US campuses. On recent visits I have found the policing of speech chastening. One liberal, male, feminist professor told me of a fairly anodyne analysis that he didn't dare publish for fear of being hounded as sexist. Even many liberals now want to roll back PC speech codes.
But, in fact, PC's basic demand — respect all groups — needs to be rolled out more widely. We now have PC for women, and racial and sexual minorities. If we had it for the working classes, too, that could change the political climate.
TV programmes in western countries rightly don't make fun of blacks, gays or Jews any more, but the white working class (WWC) enjoys no such protection. A genre of “poverty porn” TV mocks the WWC as wasters enjoying their morning beers on the sofa.
The WWC are known as chavs in Britain, canis in Spain and “white trash” in the US. Chav-based fancy-dress parties — a distant relative of “blackface parties”— enjoyed a brief fad among British students. Prince William attended one while at his military academy, Sandhurst, as Owen Jones recounts in Chavs, his 2011 book on the demonisation of the working class in Britain.
But the WWC are excluded more often than they are insulteD.They get screened out of elite settings based on their accents, first names, clothing, diet, schools, geographical origins (“flyover states”) and sometimes even their body weight. “Diversity”— a PC mantra of American and British elites — doesn't seem to include WWC people. If they do get recruited, they often get paid less.
Many in the WWC feel that the elite pays respect to every minority except theirs. The fuss made on Fox News and in the Daily Mail over an imagined “war on Christmas” is, in part, a demand for respect for the WWC's cultural traditions. For years, when the WWC was recognised as a group pre-Trump and pre-Brexit, it was often just to be accused of enjoying “white privilege”— not something they feel they've had much of lately.
Many WWC people now vote populist not because they are racists, nor because they imagine the populists will magically solve their problems, but because populists give them respect while simultaneously dissing the snobs. When Trump goes on about the virtues of steelworkers, he sounds like a Russian revolutionary in 1917. Meanwhile he pummels the PC non-WWC media.
Trump won't bring back the old steel jobs. But he knows that winning elections nowadays isn't about “the economy, stupid”. It's about language. This is one thing liberals can learn from him. Hillary Clinton's pro-WWC policies counted for nothing after she called some of Trump's voters “deplorables”.
Respect matters. Mandela understood this viscerally, because respect was one thing apartheid denied to black people. He built a political strategy on respecting his opponents. While jailed for 27 years by Afrikaners, he learnt their language, studied their history and ended up persuading them to give him the keys to South Africa.
Mandela also showed us what a realistic, modern, working-class PC could look like. Hardly any working-class people today are steelworkers. Far more of them work as carers, cleaners and cashiers. Mandela grasped that. As South African president, he would stand up if the tea lady walked into his room, and remain standing until she left. In jail, he had shown equal courtesy to his WWC guards: Mandela's respect was race-blind.
Once, in London, he visited the offices of the PR firm handling South Africa's account. He said a cheery hello to the firm's directors, who were lined up at the front door to receive him, but he then continued down the corridor, walked into the porters' room and greeted the surprised denizens like long-lost friends. It will take a politician like that to win back the WWC.
请根据你所读到的文章内容,完成以下自测题目:
A.The racist, sexist or homophobic jokes which are deemed undesirable.
B.The attempt to avoid offensive views on particular social groups.
C.The policing of speech chastening in on some American campuses.
D.The social taboo against women, and racial and sexual minorities.
答案 (1)
A.Chavs.
B.Canis.
C.White trash.
D.Flyover class.
答案 (2)
A.they believe populists can solve their economic problems.
B.they think populists would respect their cultural traditions.
C.they feel respected by populists while liberals disparage them.
D.they believe populists can bring their white privilege back.
答案 (3)
A.Because her pro-WWC policies cannot earn WWC's trust.
B.Because she used offensive term as an affront to WWC's dignity.
C.Because she mocked the WWC as wasters in TV programme.
D.Because she showed unequal courtesies to WWC and liberals.
答案 (4)
(1) 答案:B.The attempt to avoid offensive views on particular social groups.解释:我在1993年前往美国求学,并了解到了政治正确。
(2) 答案:D.Flyover class解释:工人阶级白人在英国被称为chavs,在西班牙被叫做canis,美国人称他们为“白色垃圾”。
(3) 答案:C.they feel respected by populists while liberals disparage them.解释:很多工人阶级白人投票给民粹主义者,因为民粹主义者在给予他们尊重的同时羞辱了那些自命不凡者。
(4) 答案:B.Because she used offensive term as an affront to WWC's dignity.解释:如今,赢得大选与经济无关,但与言辞有关。当希拉里将特朗普的支持者称作“可悲的人”时,她那些针对工人阶级白人的政策已经不重要了。