纪思道2026年8月4日After a 1,000-mile road trip across a swath of America, I can’t get one person out of my mind: Trinity Goodman, a cheerful, chatty woman in Oklahoma City who had a bandage on her arm.在一次穿越美国广袤土地、行程约1600公里的公路之旅后，有一个身影始终萦绕在我脑海——住在俄克拉荷马城的特里尼蒂·古德曼，她是一个性格开朗、话匣子停不下来的女人，手臂上缠着一块绷带。The reason for the bandage? Goodman, 44, survives by selling blood plasma twice a week. She had $3.78 in her checking account, one cent in her savings account to keep it open, and six pennies in her piggy bank.为什么要缠绷带？44岁的古德曼靠每周卖两次血浆维持生计。她的支票账户里只有3.78美元；储蓄账户里只有一美分——只是为了让账户不被关掉；存钱罐里还有六枚一分硬币。“That’s my full assets,” she said, smiling in mockery of her own poverty.“这就是我的全部家当，”她说，脸上带着一丝自嘲的笑。“Barely making it,” she added. “It’s really hard and it’s miserable.”“勉强维生，”她又说，“真的很难，太惨了。”She dwells in an America that many of us might have trouble imagining. For five years she staved off homelessness only by staying in the home of a man who was not a romantic partner but who took advantage of her vulnerability, she said, by regularly demanding sex. A heroic local nonprofit, Hope Community Services, helped her get low-income housing for $50 a month, she said; otherwise she would still have to choose between unwanted sex and homelessness.她生活在一个许多人或许难以想象的美国。她说，五年来，为了免于流落街头，她只能住在一个男人家里——那人并非她的伴侣，不过是利用她的脆弱定期索要性关系。她说，一家名为“希望社区服务”的当地非营利机构雪中送炭，帮她申请到了低收入住房，每月只需支付50美元；否则，她将仍然不得不在违背意愿的性关系和无家可归之间做出选择。Food stamps, $298 a month, sustain her, but they can’t be used for toilet paper or feminine hygiene products. So she searches for them at church-run pantries — lifelines in much of America.她靠每月298美元的食品券维持生计，但食品券不能用于购买卫生纸或女性卫生用品。所以她只能靠教堂开设的救济站来获取这些东西，这些救济站是美国许多地方贫困人口赖以生存的生命线。Haircuts are likewise unaffordable. “I’ve never been to a barber or any of those places,” she said. “Never. I don’t have that luxury.”剪头发同样是她负担不起的奢侈。“我从来没进过理发店之类的地方，”她说，“从来没有。对我来说太过奢侈。”Many sectors of America — and many Americans — are thriving. Yet my sense is that many of us are blind to how many people have been left far behind. So far behind that they scarcely inhabit the same country as the rest of us. And this pain across America is now magnified by President Trump’s cuts in food stamps, Medicaid, mental health funding for children, pregnancy prevention initiatives and other social programs, as well as by rising gas and food prices. Republicans are also imposing tougher work requirements for benefits; this is reasonable in theory, but in practice such requirements have proved costly to administer and end up mostly just driving people deeper into poverty.美国的许多行业欣欣向荣，许多美国人也过得很滋润。但我的感觉是，许多人对于有多少人已被远远抛在身后浑然不觉。他们落后得如此之远，以至于他们所生活的美国几乎和我们其他人生活的美国不是同一个国家。而如今，特朗普总统削减食品券、医疗补助、儿童心理健康资金、预防怀孕项目和其他社会福利项目，再加上汽油和食品价格上涨，这份苦痛在全美各地愈发沉重。共和党人还对救济福利的申领设置了更为严格的工作要求；从理论上说，这种要求似乎合理，但实践证明，这类要求实施起来成本高昂，而且最终往往只是把人们进一步推入贫困。 Tamara Reynolds for The New York TimesOn this trip, I talked to so many people who are losing food stamps and other benefits and increasingly desperate — and resentful, understandably, of elites who seem indifferent to their struggles. A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that two-thirds of Americans consider groceries unaffordable.这次旅途中，我遇到了太多正在失去食品券和其他福利的人，他们越来越走投无路——他们对那些似乎对自己的困境漠不关心的精英阶层感到愤怒，这完全可以理解。《华盛顿邮报》与益普索联合开展的最新民调显示，三分之二的美国人认为食物和日常生活用品的价格已高得难以承受。Goodman is among those feeling the squeeze, and there appears to be some risk that she will lose her food stamps — and in that case she doesn’t know how she would get by.古德曼就是感受到这种压力的其中一员，而且她似乎面临失去食品券的风险——如果真的发生了，她不知道自己还能靠什么生活下去。I’m on my annual win-a-trip journey, which I started 20 years ago to take a university student on a reporting trip to cover neglected issues. Usually we travel abroad, often in Africa, but this time we explored poverty, addiction and human trafficking in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky.我每年都会举办“赢得一次报道之旅”活动，这个项目已坚持了20年，每次我会带一名大学生一同外出采访，报道那些被忽视的议题。通常我们去海外，往往是非洲，但这一次，我们深入俄克拉荷马、阿肯色和肯塔基，探访贫困、成瘾和人口贩卖问题。My student winner this year is Brunella Tipismana, who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Lima, Peru, and just graduated from Yale University. One thing we saw repeatedly on this road trip is that poverty in America is not just about a lack of money, but is often multigenerational and self-replicating.今年获奖的学生是布鲁内拉·蒂皮斯马纳，她在秘鲁利马的一个工薪阶层社区长大，刚从耶鲁大学毕业。这趟公路旅行中，我们反复看到的一点是：美国的贫困并不只是缺钱的问题，它往往还具有代际延续性，会不断自我复制。Goodman, for example, says she grew up steeped in trauma, in a toxic family that often abused drugs. She told us that she was raped and sexually abused beginning at the age of 6 or 7. She was 9 when her mother killed herself; afterward, Goodman was raised by other family members, she said. All the trauma left a mark: She says she was clinically diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder that has left her unable to work. She has applied for disability benefits, and says she was denied, but is now appealing.就拿古德曼为例，她说自己在创伤中长大的，生活在一个经常滥用毒品、充满毒性的家庭里。她告诉我们，她从六七岁起就遭到强奸和性虐待。她九岁那年，母亲自杀身亡；之后她由其他亲属抚养长大。所有这些创伤都在她身上留下了印记：她说自己后来被临床诊断为复杂性创伤后应激障碍，导致她无法工作。她申请过残疾福利，并称自己遭到拒绝，目前正在提出申诉。 Tamara Reynolds for The New York TimesI asked Goodman what message she would have for Trump as the cuts and work requirements he ordered ripple across the land.我问古德曼，随着特朗普下令的福利削减和工作要求在全国铺开，她有什么话想对特朗普说。“You do not know what you’re doing to people who are struggling to live,” she said. “You got money in the bank. You don’t know how it feels to struggle. Live in my shoes for one day. You wouldn’t be able to handle it.”“你根本不知道你对那些挣扎求生的人做了什么，”她说，“你银行里有的是钱。你不知道挣扎是什么感觉。来过一天我的生活。你根本撑不下去。”In Pine Bluff, Ark., a largely Black city that is struggling economically, racked by crime and losing population, I visited the home of Latoya Foster, 31, a single mother with six children who has lost food stamps and as a result is behind in rent.在阿肯色州派恩布拉夫——一个以黑人为主、经济凋敝、犯罪猖獗、人口流失的城市，我走访了31岁的拉托亚·福斯特的家。她是一个独自抚养六个孩子的单亲母亲，如今已失去食品券，房租也因此拖欠。Foster works as a shift manager at Taco Bell, earning $13.40 an hour. She relied on $1,172 in food stamps per month — but they were abruptly cut off in May, apparently because of suspicions that two of her children were collecting improper benefits in other states. She denies that and says there was some kind of mistake in the system.福斯特在快餐连锁塔可钟担任值班经理，时薪13.40美元。她过去每月依靠1172美元的食品券生活——但5月这些福利突然停止，原因似乎是有关部门怀疑她的两个孩子在其他州领取了不应领取的福利。她否认这一点，并说系统里可能出了什么差错。Nationwide, some 1.5 million children have lost food stamps under Trump’s crackdown over the last year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It notes, and superb reporting by my Times colleague Jason DeParle underscores, that pressure on states to cut costs and reduce error rates may lead to wrongful denials of benefits. In addition, some three million Americans have lost Obamacare health insurance since the beginning of this year, after Republicans cut subsidies to help pay for insurance.根据预算与政策优先中心的数据，在特朗普过去一年的打击行动下，全美约有150万名儿童失去了食品券。该中心指出——并且我的《纽约时报》同事杰森·德帕尔莱的出色报道也强调，各州在削减成本和降低错误率方面的压力可能导致不当拒绝福利。此外，自今年年初以来，在共和党削减保险补贴后，约有300万美国人失去了奥巴马医改的健康保险。Without food stamps, Foster now is behind in her rent — $650 a month for a three-bedroom home in a crime-ridden neighborhood — and accumulating a $25-a-day late fee on top of the rent owed.失去食品券后，福斯特开始拖欠房租——她住在一个犯罪高发社区，三居室房子每月650美元——而且在欠款之外，每天还要增加25美元的滞纳金。“I hit rock bottom daily,” she told me. “The more I work, the harder stuff gets.”“我每天都在跌到谷底，”她告诉我，“我越努力工作，日子越艰难。”And then she broke down and wept.说着，她就情绪崩溃，泣不成声。The push to cut benefits for struggling Americans is partly rooted in a desire to trim federal spending, but that’s hard to square with the expense of the Iran war, as well as subsidies for private planes and tax cuts for the wealthiest. It’s also based on a perception that the “undeserving poor” are exploiting the system, but I think we exaggerate the degree to which it is the poor rather than the rich who get away with manipulations. As of 2019, according to ProPublica, the place in America with the highest percentage of tax audits was not a haven of billionaires but rather Humphreys County, Miss., with a majority Black population and a median household income then of roughly $26,000.推动削减美国困难人群福利的部分动因是压缩联邦开支，但这跟伊朗战争的巨额支出、对私人飞机的补贴以及给最富有人群的减税放在一起，实在难以自圆其说。还有一个原因，是人们觉得那些“不值得帮助的穷人”在钻系统的空子。但我认为，我们把穷人（而非富人）能够钻空子得手的程度夸大了。根据ProPublica的数据，截至2019年，美国税务审计比例最高的地方不是亿万富翁的天堂，而是密西西比州汉弗莱斯县——那里黑人占多数，当时家庭收入中位数约为2.6万美元。In any case, the age group most likely to live in poverty — by far — is children, particularly children 2 years old and under, and they can’t be accused of fraud, laziness or personal irresponsibility. Yes, many end up making bad choices, but we fail them before they fail us.无论如何，最有可能陷入贫困的年龄段（而且远远高于其他年龄段）是儿童，尤其是两岁及以下的儿童。他们无论如何都不应被扣上欺诈、懒惰或个人不负责任的帽子。是的，许多人最终会做出糟糕的人生选择，但往往是我们先辜负了他们，而不是他们先辜负了我们。Trump initially proposed eliminating Head Start, the federal program with bipartisan support that serves those vulnerable children in poverty. He later backed off that idea, but congressional investigators found that his administration illegally withheld $12 billion from the program for several months, causing great hardship.特朗普最初曾提议取消“启蒙计划”，这是一个得到两党支持、专门帮助贫困弱势儿童的联邦项目。他后来放弃了这一想法，但国会调查人员发现，特朗普政府曾非法扣留该项目120亿美元的资金长达数月，给项目带来巨大困难。But while it’s easy to focus on Trump and Republicans cutting Medicaid, food stamps and other benefits, it’s not just the Trump administration that seems to have a myopia about Americans falling behind.然而，虽然我们很容易把矛头指向特朗普和共和党削减医疗补助、食品券和其他福利，但似乎不仅特朗普政府对那些被甩在后面的美国人视而不见。Democrats talk a good game about housing being a human right, but the three states with the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness right now are blue ones: California, Oregon and Hawaii. Liberals rightly protest Trump’s plans to abolish the Department of Education, but it is a handful of red states — especially Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi — that have shown astonishing progress and now may represent the best hope for American education.民主党人经常高谈阔论，称住房是一项人权，但目前无家可归者中露宿街头比例最高的三个州恰恰都是民主党占优势的州：加利福尼亚州、俄勒冈州和夏威夷州。自由派人士抗议特朗普废除教育部的计划是有道理的，但恰恰是少数红州——尤其是阿拉巴马州、路易斯安那州和密西西比州——取得了惊人的进步，如今或许代表着美国教育最大的希望所在。A Black fourth-grader in Mississippi is now two and a half times as likely to test proficient in reading as a Black fourth-grader in California. Democrats have every right to call out Trump, but they should also look in the mirror at their own failures to help those left behind.密西西比州的黑人四年级学生阅读达标率现在是加利福尼亚州同年级黑人学生的2.5倍。民主党人完全有权利批评特朗普，但他们也应该照照镜子，看看自己在帮助落后人群方面的失败。When the problems are structural, we tend to ignore them. Palo Alto, Calif., is full of well-meaning liberals — four-fifths of voters supported Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in 2024 — and it makes its outstanding public schools available to children of all colors and classes … as long as their families can afford an average home price of $3.6 million.面对结构性问题，我们往往视而不见。加利福尼亚州帕洛阿尔托住着许多善意满满的自由派人士——2024年有五分之四的选民支持卡玛拉·哈里斯而不是唐纳德·特朗普——这里的优秀公立学校向所有肤色、所有阶层的孩子开放……但前提是他们的家庭负担得起360万美元的平均房价。It’s understandable that many working-class Americans feel betrayed. As I see it, politicians of all parties have been far too complacent about Americans being left behind, even as 1.3 million Americans have died of overdoses since 2000. That’s roughly the number of American service members who have died from all the wars in American history.许多美国工薪阶层感觉遭到背叛，这是可以理解的。在我看来，各党派的政治人物对美国人被抛在后面都显得太过麻木不仁，尽管自2000年以来，已有130万美国人死于药物过量。这大致相当于美国历史上所有战争中阵亡的美军人数。One reason for the complacency is that the problems, at least in their complexity, are often invisible. Americans may see a homeless person shooting drugs, but they won’t see the arc of hopelessness that began with, say, foster care — which at its worst is a government system of child abuse.这种麻木不仁的原因之一是，这些问题往往是隐形的，至少在其复杂性方面是如此。美国人可能看到一个无家可归的人在注射毒品，但他们看不到那条始于寄养系统的绝望轨迹——在最糟糕的情况下，寄养系统堪称一个政府主导的虐待儿童体系。考特尼·威廉姆斯和孩子在家中。Courtney Williams, 31, endured that broken foster care system. I met her in Oklahoma City, where she is caring for a new baby and hoping her $298 a month in food stamps won’t be taken away.31岁的考特尼·威廉姆斯曾保受那个破碎的寄养系统之苦。我在俄克拉荷马城遇到了她，她正在照顾一个新生的婴儿，希望自己每月298美元的食品券不会被取消。We taxpayers paid for Williams to be incarcerated — three times — but we never provided her the protection and opportunities she needed, especially when she was young and most needed help. And when we don’t invest in the front end, we end up paying at the back end.我们纳税人曾经三次为威廉姆斯的入狱埋单——但我们从未给予她所需的保护和机会，尤其是在她年幼、最需要帮助的时候。如果我们不在前端投资，最终只能在后端付出代价。Some of Williams’s earliest memories are of men sexually assaulting her, perhaps when she was 3 or 4. Her mother was a prostitute with addictions, she said, and at age 6 she saw her younger sister killed and was then put in foster care.威廉姆斯最早的记忆之一就是男人对她实施性侵，那时她可能只有三四岁。她说，她的母亲是吸毒的妓女，六岁那年她亲眼目睹妹妹被杀，随后她被送进寄养家庭。From there she bounced around foster homes in seven states, carrying her life belongings with her in a trash bag. When she was 11, one foster home put padlocks on the refrigerator, freezer and food cabinets, keeping her and other foster children hungry, she said.从那以后，她在七个州的寄养家庭间辗转，全部家当装在一个垃圾袋里。她说，她11岁那年的寄养家庭在冰箱、冰柜和食品柜上都上了挂锁，让她和其他寄养儿童挨饿。Williams first tried meth at age 12 and at 14 became pregnant by a man in his late 20s who, she later found out, was a convicted sex offender. She put the baby up for adoption and dropped out of school in 10th grade.威廉姆斯12岁第一次尝试冰毒，14岁时怀上了一个20多岁男子的孩子——她后来才知道那人是有前科的性犯罪者。她把孩子送人收养，10年级时辍学了。Not every foster family was abusive or hosting her for the money, she said; she recalls that one was wonderful and wanted to adopt her. But Williams, by now deeply suspicious of human kindness and full of self-doubt, asked for a different placement.她说，并非每个寄养家庭都虐待她或是为了钱才收留她。她记得有一个家庭非常好，还想收养她。但威廉姆斯当时已对人间的善意充满怀疑，而且极度缺乏自信，她要求换一个寄养家庭。When Williams was 17, her foster mother stopped getting checks for her — she’s not sure why, but perhaps some snafu in the system — and kicked her out. After that, Williams spent a decade largely homeless, wrestling with drugs, washing up in Dunkin’ Donuts restrooms and periodically getting locked up. Finally a new boyfriend, now husband, who didn’t use drugs helped her rebuild her life, and she says she hasn’t used drugs since last September, when she discovered that she was pregnant.17岁那年，她的寄养母亲不再收到为她发放的补助支票，她不清楚原因，也许是系统出了差错。于是她被赶了出去。之后，威廉姆斯有近十年基本无家可归，与毒品作斗争，在唐恩都乐店的洗手间洗漱，时不时被关进监狱。最终，一个不吸毒的新男友（她现在的丈夫）帮她重建了生活。她说自去年9月发现自己怀孕以来就再也没碰过毒品。Conservatives often emphasize the importance of “personal responsibility,” and they have a point. Self-destructive behaviors are real. Scholars have said that of millennials who follow the “success sequence” (finish high school, get a full-time job and have children only after marriage), 97 percent avoid poverty by their late 20s.保守派经常强调“个人责任”的重要性，这有一定道理。自毁行为确实存在。学者们指出，在遵循“成功序列”（完成高中学业、找到全职工作、在婚后才生育）的千禧一代中，97%的人在29岁前摆脱了贫困。Yet if we want to talk about lack of personal responsibility, we also have to have a conversation about our collective lack of responsibility, about the way we treat some kids as throwaways — or the way we’re now taking food stamps from 1.5 million children.然而，如果要讨论个人责任的缺失，我们也必须探讨集体责任的缺失，探讨我们如何将一些孩子视为弃儿——或者我们现在如何从150万名儿童手中夺走食品券。In Pine Bluff, I spoke to several elderly Black residents who said that in some ways life was actually better in the Jim Crow era. Black people can vote now, of course, and some have thrived.在派恩布拉夫，我与几位年长的黑人居民交谈，他们表示，在某些方面，吉姆·克劳时代的生活反而更好。当然，黑人现在可以投票了，有些人也过得很好。 Tamara Reynolds for The New York TimesBut these seniors lamented that the quality of life for the Black population had not progressed as they had imagined. Costs have soared, crime is a threat, obesity is common and ailments like diabetes and hypertension are widespread, taking a toll on well-being. Life expectancy in the county is shorter than in Iran or Bangladesh. Schools are still de facto segregated and lagging; the Pine Bluff school district gets an F from the state.但这些老人感叹，黑人群体的生活质量并没有像他们想象的那样得到改善。物价飞涨，犯罪肆虐，肥胖普遍，糖尿病和高血压等疾病也十分普遍，这严重损害了人们的健康。该县的人均预期寿命比伊朗和孟加拉国还短。学校实际上仍然存在种族隔离，教育水平落后；派恩布拉夫学区被州政府评为F级。“Civil rights were probably better back then,” grumbled Barbara Ollison, 76. I don’t know that she was really arguing that there had been no progress at all, but she’s right that Black children in places like Pine Bluff still struggle to find opportunity in 2026.“那时候的民权状况可能反而更好，”76岁的芭芭拉·奥利森抱怨道。我不确定她是否真的认为完全没有进步，但她说得对，在派恩布拉夫这样的地方，黑人儿童在2026年仍然难以找到机会。“You had enough back then to make it,” she told me. “And right now it’s terrible.”“那时候你拥有的东西已经足够让你活下去了，”她对我说。“而现在糟透了。”One of the few institutions that did not utterly fail places like Pine Bluff was the U.S. military. It offered a path upward and outward, along with skills training, discipline and respect. But some people here see Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, ousting Black senior officers and no longer perceive the armed forces as a path of opportunity for people of color.少数没有彻底令派恩布拉夫这类地方失望的机构之一是美国军队。它提供了向上和向外发展的途径，同时提供技能培训、纪律和尊重。但这里的一些人注意到国防部长皮特·海格塞斯赶走黑人高级军官，于是不再把军队视为有色人种的机会之路。“The military is out,” said Glayton Johnson, a retired Army veteran who pointed to Hegseth’s impact on the military’s reputation. “No, we’re not going there.”“军队不行了，”退役陆军老兵格莱顿·约翰逊说，他提到海格塞斯对军队声誉的影响。“不，我们不会去那里。”One of the people I most wanted to see on this trip was Emanuel Laster, whom I met a decade ago in Pine Bluff when he was a sweet, smart 13-year-old boy — at risk of joining a gang. You sensed that he could go either way: Maybe he would thrive and go to college, or maybe he would succumb to the gravity of his crime-ridden neighborhood. Emanuel’s bedroom was a portrait of dysfunctional America: It had three televisions, but electricity was supposed to be cut off the day I arrived for nonpayment (his mom had stationed a pit bull to deter the man from the power company from getting near enough to accomplish this).此行我最想见的人之一是伊曼纽尔·拉斯特。十年前我在派恩布拉夫认识他时，他是个可爱聪明的13岁男孩——正面临加入帮派的风险。你能感觉到他可能走向两种方向：也许他会茁壮成长，进入大学，也许他会屈服于那个犯罪猖獗社区的引力。伊曼纽尔的卧室堪称功能失调的美国的写照：里面有三台电视，但我到达那天，因为欠费，电力本应被切断（他妈妈养了一只比特犬，阻止电力公司的人靠近完成断电）。What had become of Laster? It turned out that he never finished high school, had tangles with the law and is now in jail, awaiting trial this month on federal gun charges for possessing a handgun that had been converted into an automatic weapon. Visits in the jail weren’t permitted, but I spoke to him by phone. I asked him what had gone wrong, and he said, “I hung out with the wrong crowd.” His mother, when I visited her, said the same thing.拉斯特如今怎么样了？原来他没能完成高中学业，有过数次法律纠纷，现在因持有被改装成自动武器的手枪而面临联邦枪支指控，本月将接受审判。监狱不允许探视，但我通过电话与他交谈。我问他哪里出了问题，他说：“我和坏人混在一起了。”我去拜访他母亲时，她也说了同样的话。奥特姆·霍尔曼 Tamara Reynolds for The New York TimesLaster told me that he had two boys, ages 4 and 6, with a former girlfriend, so I located them and their mother, Autumn Holman. She and her sons had been evicted and were homeless, couch surfing temporarily in a crowded apartment with a cousin and trying desperately to find a place to live.拉斯特告诉我，他和前女友有两个四岁和六岁的男孩。于是我找到了他们，还有他们的母亲奥特姆·霍尔曼。霍尔曼和儿子们被赶出住所，无家可归，暂时挤在表亲拥挤的公寓里借宿，正在拼命寻找住处。Holman works in the kitchen of a nursing home, but her car isn’t working, so commuting is a daily crisis. She’s trying to get food stamps and thought they would begin in July, but they haven’t materialized.霍尔曼在一家养老院的厨房工作，但她的车坏了，所以每天通勤都成了难题。她正在申请食品券，原以为7月就能开始领取，但一直没有收到。She said that she loved Laster, her high school sweetheart, but that they had quarreled because he was an irresponsible parent. “He got mad because I had to ask him for money for his kids,” she said, adding that she simply wanted him to pay for little things like the boys’ haircuts.她说自己深爱着高中时的恋人拉斯特——但他们发生了争执，因为他是个不负责任的父亲。“他生气是因为我不得不向他要钱养孩子，”她说，她还说，她只是想让他支付一些小开销，比如孩子们的理发费。“He knows for a fact that I’m going to be on his tail like I’m his mama,” she added. “Who else is going to do it? ‘You got kids,’ I tell him, ‘and I didn’t have them by myself.’”“他心里清楚，我会紧盯着他，就好像我是他妈妈，”她还说，“还有谁会去做这些事？‘你有孩子，’我告诉他，‘他们不是我一个人生的。’”Laster’s sons are beautiful children full of potential, but they are now growing up without a dad, just as Laster himself did. Visiting that crowded home, I kept thinking back to Emanuel a decade ago as an equally sweet child, about the obstacle course of life that Black boys face in Pine Bluff, and I wondered if his children were on a trajectory to replicate his path.拉斯特的儿子们都是充满潜力的可爱孩子，但他们现在正像拉斯特当年一样，在没有父亲陪伴的情况下长大。走访那个拥挤的家，我不断回想起，10年前的伊曼纽尔同样是个可爱的孩子，想到派恩布拉夫的黑人男孩们要面对的人生障碍，我不禁会想，他的孩子们是否正在重蹈他的覆辙？ Tamara Reynolds for The New York Times纪思道(Nicholas Kristof) 2001起成为时报专栏作家，曾两次获得普利策奖。他最新出版的回忆录名为《追逐希望：一名记者的报道生涯》(“Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life”)。欢迎在X上关注他：@NickKristof。翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。