評論
打印
The World House
地球村
Martin Luther King, Jr.
馬丁 •路德•金
Some years ago a famous novelist died. Among his papers was found a list of suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: "A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together." This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great "world house" in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.
幾年前，一位著名的小說家去世了。人們在他留下的文件中發現了一個單子，上面列有建議將來寫小說可以考慮的情節，其中最突出強調的是這樣一句：“一個散居各地的家庭繼承了一棟他們不得不一起居住的房子。”這是人類面臨的一大新問題。我們已經繼承了一棟大房子，一個大型“地球村”，我們不得不一起居住在里面——黑人和白人，東方人和西方人，非猶太人和猶太人，天主教徒和新教徒，穆斯林和印度教徒——一個被觀念、文化和利益不必要地分開的家庭。因為我們永遠不能再分開，所以必須設法學會和睦相處。
However deeply American Negroes are caught in the struggle to be at last at home in our homeland of the United States, we cannot ignore the larger world house in which we are also dwellers. Equality with whites will not solve the problems of either whites or Negroes if it means equality in a world society stricken by poverty and in a universe doomed to extinction by war.
我們美國黑人一直在進行艱苦的斗爭，只為了最終能在自己的家園——美國——安頓下來。但是不管我們卷入這個斗爭有多深，我們都不能無視地球村這個更大的家庭，因為我們也是這兒的居民。如果黑人和白人的平等指的是在陷于貧困的世界上和在因戰爭而注定滅亡宇宙中的平等，那么它既不能解決白人的問題，也不能解決黑人的問題。
