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Long road to a reckoning
漫长的清算之路
The election revealed a stark divide in the fight for racial equality
这次选举暴露了争取种族平等的斗争中存在的明显分歧
In the weeks before the Nov. 3 election, as polling suggested that former Vice President Joe Biden might stand on the precipice of a landslide victory, many who had spent the past four years fighting President Donald Trump took solace in a silver lining: Trump, with his egregious behavior and his penchant for saying the quiet part out loud, had removed a bandage that in recent decades has hidden America's deepest defects on race. In doing so, many of his opponents believed, he had presented us with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix them.
11月3日大选的前几周，民调显示前副总统拜登可能会获得压倒性胜利，这令过去四年里一直在和唐纳德·特朗普抗争的人在一线希望中得到了安慰：特朗普以其过分的行为和直白张扬的嗜好揭开了近几十年来掩盖着美国最深层次的种族缺陷的绷带。他的许多反对者认为他的这些行为给了我们一个千载难逢的机会来解决这些问题。
But election night brought a shock, if not a surprise, for those eager for the country to turn over a new leaf. While Biden remains favored to collect enough electoral votes to win and become the next President, the striking reality of the small gap between the two contenders left many despondent and fearful. This was not the total repudiation of Trump and Trumpism that so many had hoped for. Instead, in some quarters, it amounted to an embrace, with Trump actually increasing the total number of votes he'd received in 2016. Trump removed the gauze, but rather than healing the wound, we may now be watching it fester.
但对于那些渴望国家能够翻开新的一页的人来说，选举之夜带来的是惊讶甚至震惊。拜登虽然仍有望获得足够多的选举人票以赢得大选并成为下一任总统，但两位候选人之间的差距太小，这一惊人现实让许多人感到沮丧和恐惧。这并不是很多人曾希望的对特朗普和特朗普主义的全盘否定。相反，特朗普实际上获得的选票比2016年增加了，从某些方面来说这等于接受了特朗普。特朗普摘下纱布，但我们现在看到的可能不是伤口的愈合，而是伤口的溃烂。
It's no surprise that many Americans are only now catching on to this country's long history of systemic racism. In history class, most Americans learn of the past horrors of slavery and Jim Crow, but the line isn't always drawn to the present. When it is, it's often presented as a long arc of progress, one that "bends toward justice," as famously described by Martin Luther King Jr. and often repeated in political rhetoric, most famously by President Barack Obama. But the reality is that race—and racism—continues to profoundly shape American life.
许多美国人直到现在才意识到这个国家长期存在的系统性种族主义，这并不奇怪。大多数美国人在历史课上学习了过去奴隶制和种族歧视的恐怖，但这条线并不总会画到现在。即使画到了现在，它也经常被描绘成一个漫长的进程，一个“向正义低头”的过程，这是马丁·路德·金的名言，多次出现在政治言论中，其中最著名的就是美国总统巴拉克·奥巴马的言论。但现实是，种族以及种族主义将继续深刻塑造着美国人的生活。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
