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One afternoon, during my freshman year at Alabama A&M University, my homework was piling up, and I was feeling antsy.[qh]
我在阿拉巴马农工大学读大一的一个下午，作业堆积如山，我坐立不安。 [qh]
I needed a change of scenery from Foster Hall.[qh]
我需要从福斯特宿舍换个环境。 [qh]
I’d heard that the library at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, 10 minutes away, was open three hours longer than our own. [qh]
我听说位于亨茨维尔的阿拉巴马大学(10分钟路程)图书馆的开放时间比我们的图书馆长3个小时。[qh]
So I loaded up my backpack, ran down the stairs—the dorm’s elevator was busted—and headed across town.[qh]
所以我装好背包，跑下楼梯——宿舍的电梯坏了——穿过镇子。 [qh]
Founded in 1875 to educate Black students who had been shut out of American higher education, A&M was a second home for me.[qh]
农工大学成立于1875年，是为了教育那些被美国高等教育拒之门外的黑人学生，农工大学是我的第二个家。 [qh]
My mom had gone there; my uncle had been a drum major in the ’80s; my sister was on the volleyball team. [qh]
我妈妈在那里就读过; 我叔叔在80年代主修鼓; 我妹妹是排球队的。 [qh]
But when you’re home long enough, you start to notice flaws: The classroom heaters were always breaking down, and the campus shuttle never seemed to run on time when it was coldest out. [qh]
但当你在家里待的时间足够长时，你开始注意到一些缺陷:教室里的加热器总是坏掉，在外面最冷的时候，校园班车似乎从来没有准时过。 [qh]
When I arrived at UAH, I was shocked.[qh]
当我来到阿拉巴马大学的时候，我惊呆了。 [qh]
The buildings looked new, and fountains burst from man-made ponds. [qh]
建筑看起来很新，喷泉从人造池塘中喷涌而出。 [qh]
The library had books and magazines I’d never heard of—including the one for which I now write.[qh]
图书馆里有我从未听说过的书和杂志——包括我现在写的那本。 [qh]
Something else quickly became obvious: Almost every student I saw at UAH was white.[qh]
另一件事很快变得明显起来:我在阿拉巴马大学见到的几乎每个学生都是白人。[qh]
That day, a little more than a decade ago, was my introduction to the bitter reality that there are two tracks in American higher education. [qh]
十多年前的那一天，让我认识到美国高等教育有两条路，这是一个苦涩的现实。 [qh]
One has money and confers prestige, while the other—the one that Black students tend to tread—does not.[qh]
一条路拥有金钱，赋予声望，而另一条路——黑人学生倾向于涉足的——却没有。 [qh]
The United States has stymied Black education since the country’s founding. [qh]
美国自建国以来就一直阻碍黑人教育。[qh]
In Alabama in the 1830s, you could be fined $500 for teaching a Black child.[qh]
在19世纪30年代的阿拉巴马州，如果你教一个黑人孩子，你可能会被罚款500美元。 [qh]
Later, bans were replaced by segregation, a system first enforced by custom, then by state law.[qh]
后来，禁令被种族隔离所取代，这一制度首先由习俗来执行，然后由州法律来执行。[qh]
Entrepreneurial Black educators opened their own colleges, but as a 1961 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights pointed out, these schools were chronically underfunded. [qh]
有创业精神的黑人教育工作者开办了自己的大学，但正如1961年美国民权委员会的一份报告所指出的，这些学校长期资金不足。[qh]
The report called for more federal money for institutions that did not discriminate against Black students. [qh]
该报告呼吁为不歧视黑人学生的机构提供更多的联邦资金。[qh]
Nothing much came of it.[qh]
这件事没什么结果。[qh]
But as the civil-rights movement gained traction, white schools started reckoning with a legacy of exclusion. [qh]
但随着民权运动的发展，白人学校开始正视排斥的传统。 [qh]
For the first time, they began to make a real effort to offer Black students an equal shot at higher education, through a strategy called affirmative action.[qh]
第一次，他们开始通过一项叫做平权运动的策略，为黑人学生提供平等接受高等教育的机会做出真正的努力。 [qh]
President John F. Kennedy had used the phrase in a 1961 executive order requiring government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” [qh]
约翰·F·肯尼迪总统曾在1961年的一项行政命令中使用过这个词，该命令要求政府承包商“采取平权行动，确保申请人得到雇佣，雇员在就业期间得到待遇，而不考虑他们的种族、信仰、肤色或国籍”。 [qh]
The goal was to diversify the federal workforce and, crucially, to begin to correct for a legacy of discrimination against applicants of color.[qh]
这样做的目标是使联邦劳动力多样化，至关重要的是，开始纠正对有色人种申请者歧视的遗留问题。[qh]
Today, race-conscious admissions policies are weak, and used by only a smattering of the most highly selective programs.[qh]
如今，考虑种族因素的招生政策微弱，只有少数严格筛选的项目采用了这种政策。 [qh]
Colleges that adopted affirmative action in their admissions programs quickly faced challenges. [qh]
在招生计划中采取平权行动的大学很快面临挑战。 [qh]
White applicants filed lawsuits, claiming that to take race into account in hiring or education in any way discriminated against them. [qh]
白人申请者提起诉讼，声称在雇佣或教育中考虑种族因素在任何方面都是对他们的歧视。 [qh]
A long process of erosion began, undermining the power of affirmative action to right historical wrongs.[qh]
一个长期的侵蚀过程开始了，平权运动纠正历史错误的力量开始削弱。 [qh]
Today, race-conscious admissions policies are weak, and used by only a smattering of the most highly selective programs. [qh]
如今，考虑种族因素的招生政策是薄弱的，只有少数最挑剔的项目采用了这种政策。[qh]
Meanwhile, racial stratification is, in many places, getting worse.[qh]
与此同时，在许多地方，种族分层正在恶化。 [qh]
Nearly half of the students who graduate from high school in Mississippi are Black, but in 2019, Black students made up just 10 percent of the University of Mississippi’s freshman class. [qh]
密西西比州近一半的高中毕业生是黑人，但在2019年，黑人学生只占密西西比大学新生班的10%。 [qh]
The share of Black students there has shrunk steadily since 2012. [qh]
自2012年以来，该校黑人学生的比例一直在稳步下降。 [qh]
In Alabama, a third of graduating high-school students are Black, but in 2019 just 5 percent of the student body at Auburn University, one of the state’s premier public institutions, was Black. [qh]
在阿拉巴马州，三分之一的高中毕业生是黑人，但在该州主要的公立大学之一奥本大学， 2019年只有5%的学生是黑人。 [qh]
While total enrollment has grown by thousands, Auburn now has fewer Black undergraduates than it did in 2002.[qh]
虽然入学人数增加了数千人，但奥本大学现在的黑人本科生比2002年要少。 [qh]
Over the past two decades, the percentage of Black students has fallen at almost 60 percent of the “101 most selective public colleges and universities,” according to a report by the nonprofit Education Trust.[qh]
非营利组织教育信托(Education Trust)的一份报告显示，在过去20年里，在“101所最优秀的公立大学”中，黑人学生的比例下降了近60%。[qh]
