美国西部反亚洲暴力的血腥历史

BY KEVIN WAITE

作者：凯文·韦特

This year marks the 150th anniversary of one of the largest mass lynchings in American history. The carnage erupted in Los Angeles on October 24, 1871, when a frenzied mob of 500 people stormed into the city’s Chinese quarter. Some victims were shot and stabbed; others were hanged from makeshift gallows. By the end of the night, 19 mangled bodies lay in the streets of Los Angeles.

今年是美国历史上最大规模私刑事件的150周年。大屠杀发生在1871年10月24日的洛杉矶，当时一群500人的狂热暴徒冲进了该市的华人聚居区。一些受害者被枪击和刺伤;其他人则被临时吊死。到当晚结束时，只剩下19具血肉模糊的尸体躺在洛杉矶的街道上。

Lynching is a term most often associated with violence against African Americans in the post-Civil War South. But racial hatred has never been quarantined to one American region or confined to a single ethnic group. In Los Angeles in 1871, the victims were Chinese immigrants. Their deaths were part of a wave of anti-Asian violence that swept across the 19th-century American West—and reverberates to this day.

私刑这个词最常与内战后南方针对非裔美国人的暴力联系在一起。但种族仇恨从未被局限在美国的一个地区或局限于一个单一的种族群体。1871年在洛杉矶，种族仇恨的受害者是中国移民。他们的死亡是19世纪席卷美国西部的反亚洲暴力浪潮的一部分，其影响持续到了现在。

In the early days of Chinese immigration, many new arrivals performed hard manual labor, often for the railroads or as prospectors.

在中国移民的早期，许多新来者从事艰苦的体力劳动，通常是为了修建铁路或作为探矿者而来。

Chinese immigrants became the targets of abuse almost as soon as they set foot on American soil, beginning in 1850 with the California Gold Rush. White prospectors routinely drove Chinese miners from their claims, while state lawmakers slapped them with an onerous foreign miners’ tax. Along with Black Americans and Native Americans, they were barred from testifying against whites in California’s courts. As a result, assaults on Chinese people in California generally went unpunished.

从1850年加州淘金热开始，中国移民几乎一踏上美国土地就成为了虐待的目标。白人勘探者经常把中国矿工赶出他们的地盘，而州议员则向他们征收高额的外国矿工税。与美国黑人和美国土著一样，他们被禁止在加州法庭上指证白人。因此，在加州袭击中国人通常不会受到惩罚。

A perceived labor threat lay at the root of this Sinophobia. By 1870, Chinese immigrants accounted for roughly 10 percent of California’s population and a full quarter of the workforce in the state. Wherever Chinese immigrants congregated in large numbers, white workers saw a risk to their livelihoods. The threat posed by Chinese immigration never represented the existential threat to white employment that some agitators claimed. Nevertheless, they mobilized against employers, including railroad corporations and wealthy ranchers, who had Chinese immigrants on their payrolls.

中国移民的输入对当地劳动力的威胁是这种“恐华症”的根源。到1870年，中国移民约占加州人口的10%，占该州劳动力的四分之一。在中国移民大量聚集的地方，白人工人感觉到他们的工作机会收到了威胁。但事实上，中国移民带来的威胁从未像一些煽动者所说的那样严重，白人就业面临的生死存亡论并不成立。尽管如此，他们（白人）还是动员起来反对包括铁路公司和富有的牧场主在内的雇主，只因为他们的工资单上有中国移民。

In 1882, more than a decade after the attack, Calle de Los Negros—the heart of Los Angeles's original Chinatown and the site of the massacre—is bustling.

1882年，袭击发生十多年后，洛杉矶唐人街的中心和大屠杀发生地洛斯内格罗大街(Calle de Los negros)一片繁华。

The campaigns against Chinese immigrants were well organized. In the immediate post-Civil War years, so-called anti-coolie clubs arose. The Central Pacific Anti-Coolie Association, among others, advocated for a ban on Chinese immigration. In 1867, a mob of white laborers drove Chinese laborers from their San Francisco worksite, injuring 12 and killing one. The Anti-Coolie Association rallied to the mob’s defense and won the release of all 10 perpetrators.

反对中国移民的运动组织得很好。在内战刚结束的那几年，出现了所谓的反苦力俱乐部。中太平洋反苦力协会(Central Pacific Anti-Coolie Association)等机构主张禁止中国移民。1867年，一群白人劳工将华工赶出旧金山的工地，12人受伤，1人死亡。反苦力协会就团结起来为暴徒辩护，最终释放了所有10名作恶者。

This would become a recurring theme: injury and death for Chinese immigrants, exoneration for their assailants. In the Reconstruction-era South, the Ku Klux Klan targeted African Americans; in the West, Klansmen assaulted the Chinese. I’ve uncovered more than a dozen attacks on Chinese workers between 1868 and 1870 attributed to the KKK in California, as well as a smaller number in Utah and Oregon.

这之后成为了一个反复出现的主题:中国移民受伤和死亡，攻击他们的人被免于担责。在重建时期的南方，三k党的目标是非裔美国人; 在西部，三k党也袭击了中国人。我发现，在1868年至1870年间，加州有十多起针对中国工人的袭击，都是由三k党所为，犹他州和俄勒冈州也有一小部分针对中国工人的攻击。

Klan activity in California ranged from violent threats to assault to arson. In the spring of 1868, white rioters raided a series of ranches in Northern California, savagely beating the Chinese workers there. When a Methodist minister opened a Sunday school for Chinese immigrants in 1869, vigilantes burned down his church and threatened his life. Klan-affiliated arsonists torched a second church, this one in Sacramento, for the sin of serving the Chinese community. They also burned down a brandy distillery near San Jose that employed Chinese workers.

三k党在加州的活动形式从威胁到袭击到纵火。1868年春天，白人暴徒袭击了北加州的一系列农场，野蛮地殴打那里的中国工人。当一位卫理公会派牧师在1869年为中国移民开设了一所主日学校时，暴徒烧毁了他的教堂还威胁他的生命。与三k党有关联的纵火者还焚烧了另一座教堂，那是一座在萨克拉门托的教堂，理由是他们犯了为华人社区提供服务的罪。他们还烧毁了圣何塞附近一家雇佣中国工人的白兰地酒厂。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

The Ku Klux Klan was just one manifestation of an anti-Chinese fervor that reached into the highest echelons of power within California. In his 1867 inaugural address, Governor Henry Haight warned that an “influx” of Chinese immigrants would “inflict a curse upon posterity for all time.” State lawmakers campaigned against the two major civil rights measures of the era, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, by claiming that the amendments would grant citizenship and voting rights to Chinese immigrants.

三k党只是反华热情蔓延至加州最高权力阶层的表现之一。加州州长Henry Haight在1867年的就职演说中警告说，中国移民的“涌入”将“给子孙后代带来无尽的诅咒”。州议员也反对当时的两项主要民权措施，即第十四和第十五修正案，他们声称这些修正案将赋予中国移民公民身份和投票权。

Spurred by Sinophobia, California rejected both measures outright—the only free state to do so. Not until 1959 and 1962, respectively, would the California legislature offer a token ratification of the amendments.

受恐华情绪的驱使，加州断然拒绝了这两项措施——这是唯一一个这样做的自由州。直到1959年和1962年，加州立法机构才分别象征性地批准了这些修正案。

Newspapers amplified anti-Chinese sentiment and normalized hooliganism. The editor of the Los Angeles News, Andrew Jackson King, filled his columns with vitriolic abuse of the small local Chinese population. They were, he wrote, “an alien, an inferior and idolatrous race;” “hideous and repulsive;” “a curse to our country, and a foul blot upon our civilization.” (While he publicly thundered against these immigrants and the threat they posed to white workers, King employed a Chinese cook in his own home.) A spike in assaults on Chinese workers followed from his editorials.

与此同时，报纸新闻也放大了反华情绪，使流氓行为正常化。《洛杉矶新闻》的编辑Andrew Jackson King的专栏里就充斥着对当地一小部分中国人的刻薄谩骂。他写道，他们是“一个外来的、劣等的、崇拜偶像的种族”，“丑陋可憎的”，是“我们国家的诅咒，我们文明的污点”。(尽管他公开抨击这些移民以及他们对白人工人的威胁，但King却在自己家里雇佣了一名中国厨师。) 在他发表社论之后，针对中国工人的攻击激增。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

The assault that took place in Los Angeles on October 24, 1871, was the largest and deadliest of the attacks. Roughly 500 rioters—Anglo-Americans and Hispanic residents alike—charged into the city’s Chinese district after a shootout between suspected Chinese gang members and local authorities resulted in the death of a white former saloonkeeper and the wounding of a policeman. As the mob closed in, petrified Chinese residents took shelter in a long adobe building at the heart of Chinatown.

1871年10月24日发生在洛杉矶的袭击是最大规模、最致命的袭击。大约500名暴乱者冲进了该市的华人区，这些暴乱者包括英美裔和西班牙裔居民，他们袭击的起因是涉嫌华人黑帮成员与当地政府发生枪战，导致一名前酒吧白人店主死亡，一名警察受伤。随着暴徒的逼近，吓坏了的中国居民躲在唐人街中心的一座长长的土坯房里。

Two hours of indiscriminate killing followed. The mob smashed through the doors of the building and seized Chinese men and boys hiding inside—only one of whom had participated in the earlier gunfight. Rioters mutilated and murdered virtually any Chinese person they could find. When the mob ran out of hanging ropes, they used clotheslines to string up their victims.

随后是两小时的滥杀。暴徒冲过大楼的门，抓住了藏在里面的中国男人和男孩——而其中只有一人参加了早些时候的枪战。暴徒几乎残害和杀害了他们能找到的任何中国人。当暴徒用完了吊索时，他们就用晾衣绳把受害者吊死。

The mob ultimately claimed 19 lives, including a respected doctor and an adolescent boy. All but two of the bodies were moved to the city’s jail yard, where frantic friends and family members searched for their loved ones among the rows of dead. The death toll represented 10 percent of the city’s Chinese population.

暴徒最终夺去了19条生命，包括一名受人尊敬的医生和一名少年。除了两具尸体外，所有尸体都被转移到了该市的监狱院子，在那里，疯狂的朋友和家人在一排排的尸体中寻找他们的亲人。此次事件的死亡人数占该市中国人口的10%。

Although eight rioters were convicted of manslaughter, they all walked free a year later on a technicality.

尽管8名暴徒当时被判过失杀人罪，但一年后他们都因诉讼程序性细节而被释放。

Although legal discriminatory measures were taken against the Chinese, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 depicted above, Chinese immigrants took steps to settle into their new country.

尽管美国白人对华人采取了包括上文所述的《1882年排华法案》在内的歧视性的法律措施，但华人移民还是采取了一些步骤，在他们的新国家安顿了下来。

This October, Los Angeles will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the massacre amid a national uptick in anti-Asian violence. Leaders in the Chinese American community are planning a weeklong series of events to reflect on the tragedy and its resonance today. That programming accompanies a campaign to erect a permanent memorial to the 19 victims. Together, these commemorations will be a somber remembrance of the atrocity and the enduring challenges that Chinese Americans face.

今年10月，洛杉矶将在全国反亚洲暴力上升之际纪念大屠杀150周年。美国华人社区的领导人正计划举行为期一周的一系列活动，以反思这场悲剧及其引起的共鸣。该活动与为19名遇难者建立永久纪念碑的活动同时进行。这些纪念活动将是对那次暴行和华裔美国人所面临的持久挑战的沉痛回忆。

But they will also be a celebration of survival. Within a year of the massacre, Chinese immigrants moved back into some of the same quarters that had been ravaged by the mob. They rebuilt much of what had been lost and resisted repeated calls for their removal. Their very presence sent an indelible message: The mob had failed, and they would remain.

但它们也将是一场生存的庆典。在大屠杀发生后的一年内，中国移民搬回了曾经被暴徒蹂躏过的一些地方。他们重建了大部分失去的东西，并抵制了多次要求他们搬迁的呼声。他们的出现传达了一个不可磨灭的信息:暴民失败了，他们会留下来。

That’s a key message for Gay Yuen, president of the Friends of the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles, as she prepares for this year’s anniversary commemorations. “Chinese American history is U.S. history; it’s California history; it’s Los Angeles history,” she told me. “We are Americans and we helped build this country. We’re not others and we’re not foreigners.”

这对位于洛杉矶的中美之友博物馆的馆长Gay Yuen来说是一个关键信息，她正在为今年的周年纪念活动做准备。“华裔美国人的历史就是美国的历史;这是加州历史;这是洛杉矶的历史，”她告诉我。“我们是美国人，我们帮助建设了这个国家。我们不是其他人，我们也不是外国人。”

Discrimination did not deter Chinese immigrants from coming to the United States, including these students, who arrived in Seattle in 1925.

歧视并没有阻止中国移民来到美国，图为1925年来到西雅图的学生。