The_Long,_Dark_History_of_Family_Separations_漫长黑暗的

1 = Advanced Placement 先修课程，进阶课程（美国中学生在上大学前所修习以获得 大学学分的课程）。
2022·04 英语世界
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史海钩沉 73
also recounts outrages that are only a few 十年前的那些暴行。她揭开了
肯色州州长奥瓦尔·福伯斯颁 布了一项规定，将户主为未婚 母亲的家庭从救济名单中除 名。与之同一时期，佛罗里达 州不再承认事实婚姻，将其重 新定义为“非法关系”和“非 法同居”。佛罗里达州和田纳 西州将未婚母亲（也绝大多数 是黑人妇女）为户主的家庭划 定为“不合标准”，不再为这 些妇女及其子女提供援助。 6 美国南部有 7 个州颁布了 类似的法律。布里格斯记录了 当时的情况：一些社会工作者 告诉这些未婚妈妈，如果她们 想继续留在救济名单上，就得 将 子 女 寄 养。 路 易 斯 安 那 州 就 是 其 中 之 一。1960 年， 联 邦法院向新奥尔良市下达命 令，要求推进市立学校的种族 融合。之后，路易斯安那州州 长吉米·戴维斯和州议会为了 阻止这项命令，宣布了一系列 新的种族隔离法令。这些法令 中的大多数被联邦法院裁定为 非法，但其中一项“合适家庭 令”却保留下来。此法令意图 将 2.3 万名儿童排除在救济对 象之外。在新奥尔良的黑人居 民看来，这条法令是一种政治
Black civil rights groups and white allies organized “Operation Feed the Babies” to collect food, clothing, and funds for the threatened families. Aid came from as far away as England. 7 The statute was overturned. But in 1961, the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare4 mandated that children could be removed from homes deemed “unsuitable”—including because of a mother’s extramarital sex and cohabitation—if the mom refused to “rehabilitate.” Not until 1968 did the Supreme Court forbid welfare bureaucrats from investigating poor parents’ sex lives. In the meantime, the foster care system swelled with black and brown children. 8 While compulsory boarding school attendance for Native American children was abolished in the 1930s, Briggs notes that it was quickly replaced: White welfare workers were soon coming on to reservations5 to evaluate children’s need for foster care. Particularly vulnerable to being taken were children whose mothers weren’t married or whose caretakers were extended family, such as grandmothers. (Grandparents were considered too old to raise children.) Again, foster care numbers burgeoned. By the 1970s in North Dakota,
But other Southern states devised re- 将福利救济作为社会工程的
lated punishments, using welfare as a 手段，制定了相关惩罚措施。 tool of social engineering2. In 1957, at 1957 年，在小石城学校反种族
并且不得不将自己刚刚诞下的 孩子交给收养机构。大多数白 人未婚妈妈与世隔绝、闭门不 出，没人知道她们的存在。而 未婚妈妈之家和收养机构对黑 人孕妇却不闻不问，因而非洲 裔未婚妈妈大多能留下自己的 孩子，这类家庭十分引人注目。 4 然而，在 20 世纪 50 年代 和 60 年代初，随着民权运动 达 到 高 潮， 白 人 至 上 主 义 者 展开猛烈报复。自 1958 年始， 密西西比州议会着手制定法律 以惩戒未婚母亲。1964 年的一 项法案要求对她们处以重罪， 予以绝育或 3 年监禁的惩罚。 这一法案针对的实际上是黑人 妇女和她们的孩子。 5 虽然密西西比州的法案未 被通过，但其他南部各州还是
decades old. Resurrecting this forgotten 这段尘封的历史，揭示出近年
history, she demonstrates its continuity 对移t separation of migrant 策是它的延续。
74 史海钩沉
segregation fight3, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus enacted a rule to remove families headed by unwed mothers from the welfare rolls. During the same period, Florida ceased to recognize commonlaw marriages, redefining them as “illicit relationships” and “illegal cohabitation.” Florida and Tennessee defined households headed by unmarried mothers—again, disproportionately black women—as “unsuitable” and kicked the women and their kids off assistance. 6 Seven Southern states enacted laws along these lines. Briggs documents caseworkers telling mothers that if they wanted to stay on the rolls, they needed to relinquish their sons and daughters to foster care. One of those seven states was Louisiana. In 1960, after New Orleans faced a court decision requiring it to racially integrate city schools, Gov. Jimmie Davis and the legislature announced a “segregation package” of new laws to stop the desegregation order. Most were deemed illegal by the federal courts, but one that survived was a “suitable home” provision intended to prohibit 23,000 children from receiving welfare. Black New Orleans residents considered the rule a political punishment and turned it into a national and international issue.
3 指小石城事件。1957 年，美国阿肯色州小石城学校委员会允许 9 名黑人学生进入 一所公立学校就读，引起种族主义者的激烈对抗，最终在联邦政府的强力干预下平息。 该事件是美国反对种族主义的一个里程碑。
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史海钩沉 75
大多 数 美 国 人 对 劳 拉· 布 里 格 斯 在《骨 肉 分 离 》 一书中讲述的事情并非一无所 知。我们大多知道，数百年来， 非洲裔儿童经常被推上拍卖台 被迫与父母分离。也有不少人 知道，在 19 世纪，印第安原 住民儿童被带离自己的家，送 进白人开办的寄宿学校。他们 在校不能穿原住民服饰，必须 打扮得像个西方人，也不能说 自己的母语，并且好几年见不 到父母。 2 如果这本书讲述的骨肉分 离只是奴隶买卖和寄宿学校管 控，那么它读起来就会像一本 高中先修课程教科书。但布里 格斯，这位供职于马萨诸塞大 学阿默斯特分校的历史学家， 在书中也记述了仅仅发生于几
families.
3 在美国，未婚先孕的白人
3 For years in America, unmarried, 女性多年来一直被秘密送至
pregnant white women had been dis- “ 未 婚 妈 妈 之 家 ” 接 受 训 诫，
ciplined by being hidden in “homes for unwed mothers” and pressured to relinquish their newborns for adoption. Cloistered and closeted, most of these white women remained invisible, even as unwed-mother homes and adoption agencies wanted nothing to do with pregnant black women. Unmarried African Americans mostly kept their babies, and the families were highly visible. 4 But as the civil rights movement reached its apex in the 1950s and early 1960s, white supremacists lashed back. Beginning in 1958, the Mississippi legislature started crafting legislation to discipline unwed mothers. One 1964 bill called for charging them with a felony, punishable by sterilization or three years in prison. The de facto targets were black women and their children. 5 The Mississippi bills did not pass.
72 史海钩沉
The Long, Dark History of Family Separations
漫长黑暗的家人分离史
文 / 黛比·内森 译 / 蔡亦昕
By Debbie Nathan
Most of us already know some of what Laura Briggs writes about in Taking Children. Most of us are aware that, for hundreds of years, AfricanAmerican children were routinely and forcibly separated from their parents on auction blocks. And many know that in the 19th century, Native American children were removed from their families and shipped to white-run boarding schools, where they were stripped of their Indigenous clothing, dressed as Westerners, forbidden to speak their native tongues, and kept from their parents for years. 2 If slave sales and boarding school seizures were the family separations described in Taking Children, the work would read like an A.P.1 high school textbook. But Briggs, a historian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst,
the height of Little Rock’s school de- 隔离斗争最为激烈的关头，阿
2 social engineering 社会工程，指利用自然的、社会的或制度的途径来解决各种复杂 的社会问题。
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