‘Please Stop Helping Us’ “请不要再帮助我们” 作者：Thomas Sowell @ 2014-6-08

译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy）

校对：小册子（@昵称被抢的小册子）

来源：National Review， http://www.nationalreview.com/article/382135/please-stop-helping-us-thomas-sowell A new book brilliantly explains how policies designed to help blacks end up harming them. 有本新书极为出色地解释了，旨在帮助黑人的政策如何最终反而伤害了他们。 Back in the heyday of the British Empire, a man from one of the colonies addressed a London audience. “Please do not do any more good in my country,” he said. “We have suffered too much already from all the good that you have done.”

在不列颠帝国的鼎盛时期，一位殖民地来客曾在伦敦发表演说。“请不要再到我的国家去做好事了。”他说，“你们之前做的所有那些好事，已经令我们受尽折磨。”

That is essentially the message of an outstanding new book by Jason Riley about blacks in America. Its title is Please Stop Helping Us . Its theme is that many policies designed to help blacks are in fact harmful, sometimes devastatingly so. These counterproductive policies range from minimum-wage laws to “affirmative action” quotas.

这实质上就是Jason Riley关于美国黑人的最新杰作所要传达的信息，书名叫做《请不要再帮助我们》。该书的主题是，诸多旨在帮助黑人的政策实际上反而有害，有时甚至是毁灭性的伤害。从最低工资法到“平权行动”配额，在在都能见到这种事与愿违的政策。

This book untangles the controversies, the confusions, and the irresponsible rhetoric in which issues involving minimum-wage laws are usually discussed. As someone who has followed minimum-wage controversies for decades, I must say that I have never seen the subject explained more clearly or more convincingly.

这本书理清了人们讨论最低工资法相关事务时经常遭遇的争议、困惑和不负责任的华丽辞藻。作为一个数十年来一直在跟踪最低工资争议的人，我也必须承认，此前还没有见过任何人曾将这一问题解释得如此清楚、如此令人信服。

Black teenage-unemployment rates ranging from 20 to 50 percent have been so common over the past 60 years that many people are unaware that this was not true before there were minimum-wage laws, or even during years when inflation rendered minimum-wage laws ineffective, as in the late 1940s.

过去60年间，黑人青少年失业率一直徘徊在20%到50%之间。许多人对此已习以为常，以至于都没有留意到：在最低工资法出现之前，情况并非如此，哪怕是在通胀对最低工资法的效用有所抵消的年份，如1940年代末，情况也非如此。

Pricing young people out of work deprives them not only of income but also of work experience, which can be even more valuable. Pricing young people out of legal work, when illegal work is always available, is just asking for trouble. So is having large numbers of idle young males hanging out together on the streets.

为年轻人定价过高，以至令他们失去工作，这种政策不仅剥夺了他们的收入，而且也剥夺了他们的工作经验，而后者价值甚至可能更高。为年轻人定价过高，以至于他们失去合法的工作机会，但又总是可以找到非法工作，这种政策就是自讨苦吃。让大量无所事事的男青年成群结队在街上游荡，也是自讨苦吃。

When it comes to affirmative action, Jason Riley asks the key question: “Do racial preferences work? What is the track record?” Like many other well-meaning and nice-sounding policies, affirmative action cannot survive factual scrutiny.

对于平权行动，Jason Riley提出了如下关键问题：“种族优惠是否行之有效？往绩如何？”跟许多其它好心好意且悦耳动听的政策一样，平权行动经不起事实检验。

Some individuals may get jobs they would not get otherwise, but many black students who are quite capable of getting a good college education are admitted, under racial quotas, to institutions whose pace alone is enough to make it unlikely that they will graduate.

（有了平权行动，）某些人也许确实会得到他们本来得不到的工作。但许多黑人学生本来完全有能力得到良好的大学教育，却在种族配额制下被一些不适宜的学校录取，而单是这些学校的教学进度就足以使得他们无望毕业。

Studies that show how many artificial failures are created by affirmative-action admissions policies are summarized in Please Stop Helping Us , in language much easier to understand than in the original studies.

已有许多研究表明，平权行动的录取政策人为制造了许多失败，《请不要再帮助我们》用十分易懂的语言综述了相关研究。

There are many ponderous academic studies of blacks, if you have a few months in which to read them, but there is nothing to match Jason Riley’s book as a primer that will quickly bring you up to speed on the complicated subject of race in a week, or perhaps over a weekend.

如果你愿意花上几个月去读的话，研究黑人的冗长学术著作有很多。不过作为入门读物，Jason Riley的这本书无可匹敌。只要一周，甚至只要一个周末，它就能迅速让你跟上有关种族这一复杂课题的最新研究。

As an experienced journalist, rather than an academic, Riley knows how to use plain English to get to the point. He also has the integrity to give it to you straight, instead of in the jargon and euphemisms too often found in discussions of race. The result is a book that provides more knowledge and insight in a couple of hundred pages than are usually found in books twice that length.

Riley是位经验丰富的记者，而不是学者，因此他知道如何用简单易懂的语言表达论点。而且他很诚实，立论坦率直接，不会使用那些在种族问题讨论中常见的行话切口和委婉表达。得益于此，他这本两三百页的书所提供的知识和见解，比一般厚度两倍于它的书还要多。

Unlike academics who just tell facts, Riley knows which facts are telling.

与只知道说明事实的学者不同，Riely知道哪些事实能说明问题。

For example, in response to claims that blacks don’t do well academically because the schools use an approach geared to white students, he points out that blacks from foreign, non-English-speaking countries do better in American schools than black, English-speaking American students.

比如，有人宣称，黑人学业成绩不好是因为学校使用的是适合白人学生的教学方法。针对这种论断，Riley就指出，在美国的学校里，母语非英语的外国黑人比说英语的美国黑人学生表现更优。

Asian students do better than whites in schools supposedly geared to whites. In all three of New York City’s three academically elite public high schools — Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech — there are more than twice as many Asian students as white students.

在据称特别适合白人的学校里，亚裔学生比白人学生表现更好。纽约市的全部三所学业优异的公立高中——史岱文森高中、布朗士科学高中、布鲁克林技术高中，在校亚裔学生数量是白人学生的两倍以上。

So much for the theory that non-whites can’t do well in schools supposedly geared to whites.

在据称特别适合白人的学校里，不是白人就无法表现良好，这种论调可以休矣。

On issue after issue, Please Stop Helping Us cites facts to destroy propaganda and puncture inflated rhetoric. It is impossible to do justice to the wide range of racial issues — from crime to family disintegration — explored in this book. Pick up a copy and open pages at random to see how the author annihilates nonsense.

针对一个个议题，《请不要再帮助我们》挨个引用事实来推翻那些宣传口号、戳穿那些言过其实的花言巧语。此处不可能一一点到该书所论述的各类种族议题，它们跨度甚大，从犯罪到家庭解体都有。捡起一本，随便翻几页，看看作者是如何灭掉那些胡说八道的吧。

His brief comments pack a lot of punch. For example, “Having a black man in the Oval Office is less important than having one in the home.”

他的简洁评论常常一针见血。比如这句，“白宫椭圆办公室里坐着个黑人，可不如家里坐着个黑人那么重要。”

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