When I started university in Britain in 1988, political correctness didn’t exist. If a woman tried to speak at a students’ meeting, the cry would go up, “Get your tits out for the lads!” The ritual climax of bar conversations was a double entendre about homosexuality. But, in 1993, I went to study in the US and discovered PC. The American students I met didn’t make racist, sexist or homophobic jokes. When I returned home and told British friends about this strange new world, they explained that it was because Americans were humourless. This wasn’t actually true. The Americans were much funnier than the Brits with their eternal gay jokes.
1988年我在英国刚上大学那会儿，还不存在政治正确。如果一位女士想在学生集会上发言，底下就会嘘声四起，“胸露出来给哥们瞧瞧！”酒吧聊天的一个固定高潮就是有关同性恋的下流双关语。但是1993年我去美国求学时，我第一次知道了政治正确。我遇到的美国学生不会开种族主义、性别歧视或忌惮同性恋的玩笑。而当我回到英国，向朋友们讲述这个奇怪的新世界时，他们说那是因为美国人没有幽默感。这当然不是真的。美国人的同性恋段子比英国人的好笑得多。
The attempt to shut out any views deemed undesirable has since got out of hand on some US campuses. On recent visits I have found the policing of speech chastening. One liberal, male, feminist professor told me of a fairly anodyne analysis that he didn’t dare publish for fear of being hounded as sexist. Even many liberals now want to roll back PC speech codes.
这种把任何被视为不可取的观点都拒之门外的尝试，在一些美国大学校园里已渐渐失控。在最近的访问期间，我感到这种对言论的管束令人压抑。一位信奉女权的自由派男性教授给了我一个相当四平八稳的分析：他不敢著述，因为害怕被当做性别歧视者而受到声讨。就连许多自由派人士现在都想在一定程度上逆转政治正确言论准则。
But, in fact, PC’s basic demand — respect all groups — needs to be rolled out more widely. We now have PC for women, and racial and sexual minorities. If we had it for the working classes, too, that could change the political climate. Two rather different politicians — Donald Trump and Nelson Mandela — have shown us the outlines of a working-class PC.
但事实上，政治正确的基本诉求——尊重所有群体——需要更全面地推广。我们现在对女性、种族和性取向少数人群都讲政治正确。如果我们对工人阶层也讲政治正确，政治气候可能会发生改变。唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)和纳尔逊?曼德拉(Nelson Mandela)这两位截然不同的政界人士向我们展示了工人阶层政治正确的轮廓。
TV programmes in western countries rightly don’t make fun of blacks, gays or Jews any more, but the white working class (WWC) enjoys no such protection. A genre of “poverty porn” TV (think Benefits Street and Wife Swap in Britain) mocks the WWC as wasters enjoying their morning beers on the sofa.
西方国家电视节目正确地不再拿黑人、同性恋或犹太人取乐，但白人工人阶层(WWC)享受不到这种保护。英国有一类“贫穷色情”电视节目，比如《福利街》(Benefits Street)和《换妻》(Wife Swap)，专门嘲讽这些白人工人阶层，把他们描绘成一大早就瘫坐在沙发上喝啤酒的废物。
The WWC are known as chavs in Britain, canis in Spain and “white trash” in the US. Chav-based fancy-dress parties — a distant relative of “blackface parties” — enjoyed a brief fad among British students. Prince William attended one while at his military academy, Sandhurst, as Owen Jones recounts in Chavs, his 2011 book on the demonisation of the working class in Britain.
白人工人阶层在英国被称为“chavs”，在西班牙被称为“canis”，在美国被称为“white trash”（白人垃圾）。Chav主题的化装舞会——“黑脸舞会”的远亲——一度在英国学生间风行。欧文?琼斯(Owen Jones)在他2011年出版的有关英国工人阶层的著作《Chavs：工人阶级的妖魔化》(Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class)中提到，威廉王子(Prince William)在桑赫斯特军事学院(Sandhurst)期间就参加过这种舞会。
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