視力與偏見

2007-02-04/經濟日報【本文摘自聯經出版《讀李家同學英文》】

在從紐約到波士頓的火車上，我發現隔壁座的老先生是位盲人。

我的博士論文指導教授是位盲人，因此我和盲人談起話來，一點困難也沒有，我還弄了一杯熱騰騰的咖啡給他喝。

當時正值洛杉磯種族暴動時期，我們的談話因此就談到種族偏見的問題。

老先生告訴我，他是美國南方人，從小就認為黑人低人一等，他家的佣人是黑人，他在南方時從未和黑人一起吃過飯，也從未和黑人上過學。

到了北方念書，他有次被班上同學指定辦一次野餐會，他居然在請帖上註明「我們保留拒絕任何人的權利」。在南方這句話就是「我們不歡迎黑人」的意思，當時舉班譁然，他還被系主任抓去罵了一頓。

他說有時碰到黑人店員，付錢時總將錢放在櫃台上，讓黑人拿去，而不肯和他的手有任何接觸。

我笑著問他：「那你當然不會和黑人結婚了！」

他大笑起來：「我不和他們來往，如何會和黑人結婚？說實話，我當時認為任何白人和黑人結婚都會使父母蒙辱。」

可是，他在波士頓念研究所時，發生了車禍。雖然大難不死，可是眼睛完全失明，什麼也看不見了。他進入一家盲人重建院，在那裡學習如何用點字技巧，如何靠手杖走路等，慢慢地終於能夠獨立生活。

他說：「可是我最苦惱的是，我弄不清楚對方是不是黑人。我向我的心理輔導員談我的問題，他也盡量開導我，我非常信賴他，什麼都告訴他，將他看成自己的良師益友。」

「有一天，那位輔導員告訴我，他本人就是位黑人。從此以後，我的偏見就慢慢完全消失了，我看不出人是白人，還是黑人。對我來講，我只知道他是好人，還是壞人；至於膚色，對我已絕對地無意義了。」

車子快到波士頓，老先生說：「我失去了視力，也失去了偏見，多麼幸福的事！」在月台上，老先生的太太已在等他，兩人親切地擁抱。我赫然發現他太太是一位滿頭銀髮的黑人，當時吃了一驚。

我這才發現，我視力良好，因此我偏見猶在，多麼不幸的事！
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Sight and prejudice

While riding the train from New York to Boston, I discovered that the elderly man sitting next to me was blind.

My Ph.D. thesis advisor was a blind man, so making conversation with blind people is not at all difficult for me. I even fixed him a piping hot cup of coffee.

The L.A. race riots were in full swing at the time, so naturally the subject of racial prejudice came up in our conversa-tion.

The man told me that he was from the American South, and ever since he was a child, he had thought black people were inferior. The servants in his house were black. In the South, he had never once eaten a meal with a black man, nor had he ever gone to school with one.

When he went to school in the North, his classmates once assigned him to organize a picnic, and he actually wrote “We reserve the right to reject any comer”on the invi-tation. In the South, that translates to“We don’t welcome blacks”. That caused quite an uproar in his class; he even got a repri-mand from the department head.

He said that when he encountered black cashiers, as he sometimes did, he’d always put the money on the counter for them to pick up when he paid. He refused to make physical contact with their hands.

I asked him with a smile,“So of course you’d never marry a black woman, right”

He burst out laughing.“I didn’t even associate with them—how could I ever marry one To be honest, back then I thought that any white man who married a black woman brought shame upon his parents.”

While he was going to graduate school in Boston, however, he was in a car accident. Although he escaped with his life,his eyes were totally blinded; he could no longer see anything at all. He went to a rehabilitation center for the blind, where he learned how to use Braille, how to walk with a cane, and so on. Eventually he was able to live independently again.

“But the most exasperating thing was that I could no longer tell whether people were black,”he said.“I told my psycholog-ical counselor about my problem, and he gave me the best advice he could. I really trusted him; I told him everything. I saw him as a mentor and a good friend.”

“One day, my counselor told me that he was black. After that, my prejudice slowly faded away until it was completely gone. I couldn’t tell if a man was white or black—to me,all I knew was whether he was a good man or a bad one. The color of his skin was no longer of the slightest impor-tance to me.”

The train was almost to Boston.“I lost my sight, and my prejudice along with it,”said the old man.“What a wonderful thing!”

On the platform, the man’s wife was waiting for him. The two of them embraced warmly. Suddenly I was shocked to discover that his wife was a silver-haired black woman!

It was then that I realized: because my sight is perfectly fine, my prejudice still ex-ists. What an unfortunate thing!