第二部分 Part II
When Dutch colonists landed at the southern tip of Africa over three hundred years ago, they encountered an indigenous people known as the Khoisan. The Khoisan are the Native Americans of South Africa, a lost tribe of bushmen, nomadic hunter-gatherers distinct from the darker, Bantu-speaking peoples who later migrated south to become the Zulu, Xhosa, and Sotho tribes of modern South Africa. While settling in Cape Town and the surrounding frontier, the white colonists had their way with the Khoisan women, and the first mixed people of South Africa were born.
00年前，当荷兰殖民者的船在南非最南端靠岸的时候，他们遇到的原住民是科伊桑人。科伊桑人是南非的本土原住民，属于布须曼部落的一个分支，是一个以打猎、采集为生的游牧民族。再之后，肤色更黑、说着班图语的人迁徙到南非，构成了现代南非民族的几大部落派系——祖鲁、科萨、梭托。科伊桑人与这几类人完全不同。白人殖民者在开普敦及附近驻扎下来之后，对科伊桑女人产生了想法，不久后，第一批混血南非人出生了。
To work the colonists’ farms, slaves were soon imported from different corners of the Dutch empire, from West Africa, Madagascar, and the East Indies. The slaves and the Khoisan intermarried, and the white colonists continued to dip in and take their liberties, and over time the Khoisan all but disappeared from South Africa. While most were killed off through disease, famine, and war, the rest of their bloodline was bred out of existence, mixed in with the descendants of whites and slaves to form an entirely new race of people: coloreds. Colored people are a hybrid, a complete mix. Some are light and some are dark. Some have Asian features, some have white features, some have black features. It’s not uncommon for a colored man and a colored woman to have a child that looks nothing like either parent.
殖民者的农场和牧场需要大量的人力，很快，奴隶从荷兰帝国的各个角落被输送进来——西非、马达加斯加，还有东印度群岛。奴隶开始和科伊桑人通婚，白人殖民者也不断在里面插一脚，随着时间流逝，科伊桑人从南非消失了。他们中的大多数死于疾病、饥荒和战争，而剩下来的那点儿纯种血统也在长期与白人和奴隶的通婚杂交中消失了，形成了一个新的人种：有色人种。有色人种是完全的混血产物。有些人肤色浅些，有些人肤色深些。有些人有亚洲体征，有些有白人特征，有些有黑人体征。如果一个有色人种男人和一个有色人种女人结合生下一个小孩，这个小孩既不像爸爸也不像妈妈，那一点儿也不奇怪。
The curse that colored people carry is having no clearly defined heritage to go back to. If they trace their lineage back far enough, at a certain point it splits into white and native and a tangled web of “other.” Since their native mothers are gone, their strongest affinity has always been with their white fathers, the Afrikaners. Most colored people don’t speak African languages. They speak Afrikaans. Their religion, their institutions, all of the things that shaped their culture came from Afrikaners.
严格来说，有色人种没有可追溯的历史，这是他们身上自带的诅咒。如果他们往上查自己的家谱，到了某一点上，就会分叉形成白人、原住民和一个叫作“其他”的复杂网络。由于他们的原住民母亲那个派系已经消失，他们所拥有的最明显的血统联系就是他们的白人父亲——南非白人。大多数的有色人种都不会说非洲语言，他们说的是南非荷兰语。他们的宗教、政治体系，以及所有一切和文化相关的东西，都来自于南非白人。
The history of colored people in South Africa is, in this respect, worse than the history of black people in South Africa. For all that black people have suffered, they know who they are. Colored people don’t.
在这方面，南非有色人种的历史比南非黑人的历史还要糟。尽管黑人受了很多苦，他们起码知道自己是谁，但有色人种并不知道。
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