善良的人们和肮脏的工作（英汉对照）
来源 | 纽约时报
America Runs on ‘Dirty Work’ and Moral Inequality
Aug. 13, 2021
靠“肮脏的工作”和道德不平等运转着的美国
2021.8.13
By Eyal Press
埃亚勒·普雷斯
Mr. Press is the author of the forthcoming book “Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America,” from which this essay is adapted.
普雷斯先生所著的《肮脏的工作：基础工作和美国不平等的隐患》一书即将出版，本文即改写自书中内容。
After the recession in 2008, Harriet Krzykowski was hired as a mental health aide at the Dade Correctional Institution, a prison in South Florida. Her salary was modest — $12 an hour.
2008的经济衰退过后，哈莉特·卡兹科夫斯基得到了一份精神治疗助理的工作，雇主是戴德郡惩教所，南佛州的一所监狱。她工资微薄——一小时12美元。
But the low pay bothered her far less than hearing about guards visiting abuse on the mentally ill prisoners entrusted to her care. Some of these prisoners were being starved, Ms. Krzykowski was told. Others were locked inside a scalding shower. Among the prisoners subjected to this sadistic punishment was Darren Rainey, a mentally ill man who collapsed in the stall and died. Autopsy photos later leaked to the press showed that much of the skin on Mr. Rainey’s chest, back and legs had peeled off.
然而， 远比低薪更令她烦恼的，是听闻监狱看守对她所负责关怀的那些精神病囚犯的虐待。卡兹科夫斯基女士得知，这批囚犯当中，有些曾被迫挨饿，还有一些曾被锁进开着滚烫淋浴的浴室里。蒙受这般残虐刑罚的囚犯中有一位，名叫达伦·瑞尼，这个有精神问题的男人在淋浴间中昏厥而死。事后泄露给媒体的一些尸检照片显示，瑞尼先生胸口、后背及双腿上的皮肤都有大面积的剥落。
When she learned of Mr. Rainey’s death, Ms. Krzykowski wanted to quit her job. But she couldn’t afford to. She needed the paycheck she drew to support her family. She also couldn’t report what had happened without risking retaliation from the guards, on whom the mental health staff in jails and prisons depend for their safety. So she kept silent.
一了解到瑞尼先生的死亡，卡兹科夫斯基女士就想到了辞职。但她辞不起。她需要这份薪水来支撑自己的家庭。同时她也没法将实情举报而不冒着受看守们报复的风险，狱中的精神健康工作人员都还得靠着那班看守来保护自己的安全。于是，她保持了沉默。
Ms. Krzykowski could be viewed as an enabler and accomplice. But there is also another way to see her: as a worker performing a function that society tacitly condones but prefers not to hear too much about. I’ve spent the past few years researching the lives of such workers: mental health aides and guards who patrol the wards of America’s jails and prisons, many of which are rife with brutality and violence; Border Patrol agents who enforce America’s inhumane immigration policies; undocumented immigrants who man the “kill floors” of industrial slaughterhouses, where animals are hacked apart under brutal conditions in order to satisfy the popular demand for cheap meat; and drone operators who carry out “targeted killings” in America’s never-ending wars, which have faded from the headlines even as the number of lethal strikes conducted with little oversight steadily increased under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
你可以将卡兹科夫斯基女士看作纵容者和共犯，但也可以换个角度看她：一位履行着某一职能的工作者，对于该职能，整个社会都在默许着，却又不想听到太多。过去几年，我研究了这类工作者的生活：有美国监狱里的精神治疗助理和巡逻监房的看守，这些监狱中有许多都充斥着残忍和暴力；有边境巡逻人员，他们执行着美国并不人道的入境政策；有在工业屠宰场的“宰杀区”中干活的无证件移民，在那里动物被以残忍的方式劈开，为的是满足大众对廉价肉类的需求；还有那些在美国无休止的战争中负责实施“定点杀戮”的无人机操作员，他们已被头条新闻所遗忘，尽管在巴拉克·奥巴马和唐纳德·特朗普总统治下，这些几乎不受监管的致死打击的数量一直在稳步上升。
To the extent they are noticed at all, the people who perform such functions tend to be harshly judged, denounced for their involvement in or proximity to violence. Such judgments are not necessarily wrong, but they obscure an uncomfortable reality: We are all implicated in this dirty work, even if the people who do it are conveniently hidden from us.
而当履行这些职能的人群真被注意到的时候，他们往往要遭受苛刻的评判，要为了其对暴行的参与或靠近而承受谴责。这些评判不一定是错的，但它们却模糊了一个令人不适的真相：在这肮脏的工作中，我们每个人都有份，即便那些实际动手的人被方便地藏匿在了我们的视线之外。
“Dirty work” can refer to any unpleasant job, but among social scientists, the term has a more pointed meaning. In 1962, Everett Hughes, an American sociologist, published an essay titled “Good People and Dirty Work” that drew on conversations he’d had in postwar Germany about the mass atrocities of the Nazi era. Mr. Hughes argued that the persecution of Jews proceeded with the unspoken assent of many supposedly enlightened Germans, who refrained from asking too many questions because, on some level, they were not entirely displeased.
“肮脏的工作”可以指代任何令人不快的职业，但在社会学家眼中，这个词语有着更尖锐的含义。1962年，美国社会学家埃弗里特·休斯发表了一篇题为《善良的人们和肮脏的工作》的论文，素材来自于他在战后德国就纳粹时期的大规模暴行而与他人进行的交谈。休斯先生的论点是，对犹太人的迫害是在许多所谓的文明进步的德国人的默许下进行的，那些德国人之所以没有提出太多的质疑，是因为在某种程度上，他们所感到的也不全然是不满。
This was the nature of dirty work as Mr. Hughes conceived of it: unethical activity that was delegated to certain agents and then disavowed by society, even though the perpetrators had an “unconscious mandate” from their fellow citizens. As extreme as the Nazi example was, this dynamic existed in every society, Mr. Hughes wrote, enabling respectable citizens to distance themselves from the morally troubling things being done in their name. The dirty workers were not rogue actors but “agents” of “good people” who passively stood by.
休斯先生认为，这就是肮脏工作的本质：不道德的活动，被委派给特定的代理人，然后再被社会抵赖掉，尽管实施者得到了同胞们“无意识的授权”。休斯先生写道，虽然纳粹的例子很极端，但这套动力机制却存在于每个社会中，让那部分体面的公民得以远离这些道德上令人不安的事情，即便这些事情是以他们的名义施行。那些肮脏的工作者并非蓄意作恶的主体，而是那些袖手旁观的“善良的人们”的“代理”。
Contemporary America runs on dirty work. Some of the people who do this work are our agents by virtue of the fact that they perform public functions, such as running the world’s largest penal system. Others qualify as such by catering to our consumption habits — the food we eat, the fossil fuels we burn, which are drilled and fracked by dirty workers in places like the Gulf of Mexico. The high-tech gadgets in our pockets rely on yet another form of dirty work — the mining of cobalt — that has been outsourced to workers in Africa and to foreign subcontractors that often brutally exploit them.
当代美国的运转正有赖于肮脏的工作。从事这类职业的人中，有部分应被视为我们的代理，是因为他们在事实上履行着公共的职能，比如运行着世界上最庞大的刑罚系统。其余的人也能够算作代理，是因为他们在服务于我们的消费习惯——我们吃进去的食物，我们烧掉的化石燃料，后者是由肮脏工作者在墨西哥湾一类的地方钻探和压裂开采出来的。我们口袋里的高科技玩意则依赖于另一种肮脏的工作——钴矿的开采——它被外包给了非洲的矿工以及那些对他们多有残酷剥削的外国分包商。
Like the essential jobs performed by grocery clerks and other low-wage workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, this work sustains our lifestyles and undergirds the prevailing social order, but privileged people are generally spared from having to think about it. One reason is that the dirty work occurs far away from them, in isolated institutions — prisons, slaughterhouses — that are closed to the public. Another reason is that the privileged rarely have to do it. Although there is no shortage of it to go around, dirty work in America is not randomly distributed. It falls disproportionately to people with fewer choices and opportunities such as high-school graduates from depressed rural areas, undocumented immigrants, women and people of color.
就如在新冠疫情期间食杂店店员和其他低薪工人所做的基础工作那样，这类工作维持着我们的生活方式并支撑着普遍的社会秩序，但特权阶层却通常可免于对它的思考。一个原因是，这些肮脏的工作都发生在远离他们的地方，在与公众隔绝的机构里——如监狱、屠宰场。另一个原因是，特权阶层几乎不用自己动手。尽管肮脏的工作多得是，可在美国，它并不是随机分布的。它不成比例地落在更无选择、更缺机会的人肩上，比如来自经济萧条的偏远地区的高中学历者、无证件移民、妇女以及有色人种。
Many of these workers are victims in their own right, susceptible not only to exploitation and physical injury — as is true of so many people in low-status occupations — but also to another, less familiar set of hazards, owing to the unpalatable nature of the jobs they do. In their classic book, “The Hidden Injuries of Class,” the sociologists Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb called for shifting the focus of class analysis away from material conditions to “the moral burdens and the emotional hardships” that workers bear. For dirty workers, these burdens include stigma, self-reproach, corroded dignity and shattered self-esteem. In some cases, they include “moral injury,” a term that military psychologists have used to describe the suffering that some soldiers endure after they carry out orders that transgress the values at the core of their identity.
这些工作者中有很多本身就是受害者，他们不但容易遭受剥削和身体上的伤害——许许多多职业地位低下的人们都是如此——还被暴露在另一类较不为人知的危险中，其原因正是他们工作里所带有的那令人不适的属性。社会学家理查德·桑内特和乔纳森·科布在其经典著作《阶级中的隐伤》里，呼吁人们将阶级分析的焦点从物质条件转向工人们所承受的“道德负担和情感上的困难”。对肮脏工作者来说，这些负担包括耻辱、自责、被腐蚀的尊严和被打碎的自尊。在一些情况下，这里头还包括了“道德创伤”，军事心理学家用这个词语来描述一些军人在执行了与自我认同的核心价值相违背的命令后所经受的煎熬。
“When a man — a good man, or woman — goes into prison, a little bit of your goodness wears off,” a former corrections officer named Bill Curtis told me. “You became jaded. You become more callous.”
“只要一个人——一个善良的男人或女人——走进了监狱，其善良就会有那么一点点的磨损，”一位名叫比尔·柯蒂斯的前狱警告诉我，“你会心生厌倦，会变得愈加麻木。”
The moral slide Mr. Curtis described may be particularly unsettling for those who are well intentioned, including the legion of psychiatric aides who work in jails and prisons, which in recent years have effectively become America’s largest mental health institutions. As I have reported elsewhere, mental health staff routinely violate medical ethics by standing by while incarcerated people with mental illness are mistreated and abused. For example, in the months after Mr. Rainey’s death, Ms. Krzykowski lost her appetite. Her hair fell out. She struggled with guilt and shame and was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
柯蒂斯先生所描述的这种道德滑坡对于那些抱着善意的人们可能尤为困扰，包括在监狱里工作的大批精神科助理，近年来，监狱实际上已经成为了美国最大的精神卫生机构。我曾在别处报道过，精神健康工作人员日常性地违背着医学伦理，当有精神疾病的囚犯受到欺负和虐待时，他们只是袖手旁观。例如，在瑞尼先生死后的几个月中，卡兹科夫斯基女士不仅丧失了食欲，还大把地掉发。她艰难地活在自己的罪恶和耻辱感中，最终被诊断出创伤后应激障碍。
Though more difficult to quantify, the moral and emotional wounds that many dirty workers experience can be as debilitating as material disadvantage, shaping people’s sense of self-worth, their place in the social order and their capacity to hold on to their dignity and pride. The result is a form of moral inequality that mirrors the economic kind. Just as the rich and poor have come to inhabit starkly different worlds, an equally stark gap separates the people who perform the most thankless, ethically troubling jobs in America and those who are exempt from these activities. Like so much else in a society that has grown more and more unequal, the burden of dirtying one’s hands — and the benefit of having a clean conscience — are increasingly functions of privilege: of the capacity to distance oneself from the isolated places where dirty work is performed while leaving the sordid details to others.
尽管更难量化，但这种许多肮脏工作者都有所体验的道德和情感上的创伤可能会如物质条件上的劣势一般令人虚弱无助，它塑造着人们的自我价值感，及其在社会秩序中的位置，还有他们维持尊严和骄傲的能力。这导致了一种道德上的不平等，而这正是经济不平等的映照。就如富人和穷人已居住在截然不同的世界里一般，一道同样巨大的裂缝也隔开了美国社会中那些从事着最不讨好、道德上最多困扰的工作的人群和那些得以免于此类活动的人群。而像一个社会中其他许许多多变得愈发不平等的事情一样，一个人弄脏双手的负担感——抑或是拥有清白良心的怡然——也越来越取决于他的特权：让自己远离那些隔绝的肮脏工作发生地，而将龌龊的细节留给他人的能力。
To be sure, plenty of elite white-collar professionals — Wall Street bankers who sell shady financial products, or software engineers who design hidden spyware — do jobs that are morally suspect. But for white-collar workers who grapple with the ethical consequences of what they do, lavish salaries and bonuses can offset whatever discomfort they may feel. These elites are also less likely to be shamed and stigmatized for what they do than to be envied, lessening the impact of the ethical compromises they may feel they are making.
诚然，许多职业白领精英都在从事着道德上可疑的工作——销售灰色金融产品的华尔街银行家，或是设计隐藏间谍程序的软件工程师。但对于白领工人来说，当其所作所为的道德后果令他们内心争斗时，高额的薪水和奖金都可以作为对他们也许会感受到的任何不适的一种弥补。再者，比起因为自己的职业而蒙羞受辱，这些精英更有可能获得羡慕，这也会缓解他们在感觉到自己做了道德妥协时所受到的心理冲击。
In my research, I have found that people from marginalized groups are not only more likely to do the dirty work in America, they are also more likely to be faulted for it, singled out as “bad apples” who can be blamed when systemic violence that has long been tolerated comes to light. This is not to say that they are not accountable for their actions. Though charges weren’t brought against them, the prison guards who put Darren Rainey in the shower deserve to be shamed and prosecuted.
在我的研究中，我发现美国社会里的边缘人群不仅更有可能从事肮脏的工作，还更有可能为此受到指责，这些人被单独划为“害群之马”，当长期被容忍的系统性暴行一朝见光，他们就成了可以被归咎的对象。这并不是说他们对自己的行为没有责任。虽然那帮将达伦·瑞尼丢进淋浴间的监狱看守并未被控告，但他们应该为此蒙羞并受到法律的追究。
But pinning the blame for dirty work solely on the people who carry it out can be a useful way to obscure the power dynamics and the layers of complicity that perpetuate their conduct. In prisons as elsewhere, the conditions that give rise to such work are a product of collective decisions, after all, reflecting our values, the social order we unconsciously mandate and what we are willing to have done in our name.
然而，将肮脏的工作仅仅归咎于执行者的做法，也许很便利地模糊了维持他们这种行为的权力动力机制和层层的共谋关系。不论是在监狱还是别处，让这类工作得以出现的条件终究都是集体决策的产物，它反映着我们的价值观，我们无意识中所要求的社会秩序，以及我们以自己的名义乐见其成的行动。
In the case of Mr. Rainey’s death, the chain of responsibility extends not only to the Florida Department of Corrections but also to the governor at the time, Rick Scott, and the Republican legislature of a state that was spending less money per capita on mental health than every other state except Idaho. It also extends to many “good people” who voted these officials into office.
在瑞尼先生之死的例子中，责任链条之延伸所及，不仅有佛州的惩教局，还有时任州长里克·斯科特，以及该州的共和党议会，该州在精神健康上的人均预算低于爱达荷州之外的所有州。链条还要伸向许多“善良的人们”，是他们用投票将这些官员送上了台。
What we owe dirty workers is the willingness to see them as our agents and to grapple with our own complicity. We also owe many of them the right to have their stories listened to with respect and curiosity.
我们欠那些肮脏工作者的，是将他们视为自己的代理，同时承认并承受我们自身的共谋角色的意愿。对于他们中的许多人，我们还欠一个让其故事得到倾听的权利，以尊重和好奇去倾听。
How might this look? One evening not long ago, I attended a ceremony in a small chapel at the V.A. medical center in Philadelphia, where a group of veterans gathered to talk about the moral injuries they had sustained while serving in America’s recent wars. One veteran sobbed while recounting an airstrike he’d called in that ended up killing dozens of Iraqi civilians.
这会呈现出什么样子呢？不久前的一个晚上，我参加了费城退伍军人医疗中心内一间小教堂的一个仪式，一群老兵聚在一块儿，谈论他们在参加美国最近的几场战争时所遭受的道德创伤。在讲述到他自己呼叫来的一场空袭最终令数十位伊拉克平民丧生时，一位老兵抽泣了起来。
After the veterans spoke, members of the audience formed a circle around them, linking arms and delivering a message that all dirty workers deserve to hear. “We put you into situations where atrocities were possible,” the audience members chanted in unison. “We share responsibility with you for all that you have seen, for all that you have done, for all that you have failed to do.”
在老兵们的发言之后，观众绕着他们围成了一个圆圈，大家挽着手臂，表达着一个所有肮脏工作者都值得听到的信息。“是我们将你们置于允许暴行发生的处境中，”观众们齐声诵念，“你们所见的一切，所做的一切，所未能做到的一切，其责任都有我们共担。”
原文链接：
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/opinion/us-dirty-work.html
（以译治己之失语：狄佳吟）
声明：文中观点仅属于作者，不代表译者意见
