Call it the crisis of whiteness.
权且称之为“白”的危机。
White anxiety has fueled this year’s political tumult in the West: Britain’s surprising vote to exit the European Union, Donald J. Trump’s unexpected capture of the Republican presidential nomination in the United States, the rise of right-wing nationalism in Norway, Hungary, Austria and Greece.
白人焦虑推动了今年的西方政治动荡：英国令人震惊地投票决定退出欧盟，美国的唐纳德•J•特朗普(Donald J. Trump)出人意料地获得了共和党的总统提名，挪威、匈牙利、奥地利和希腊的右翼民族主义崛起。
Whiteness, in this context, is more than just skin color. You could define it as membership in the “ethno-national majority,” but that’s a mouthful. What it really means is the privilege of not being defined as “other.”
在此背景下，白不仅仅是指肤色。你可以将其定义为“人种-民族多数”的成员，但这样有点拗口。它的真正含义是不会被定义为“他者”的特权。
Whiteness means being part of the group whose appearance, traditions, religion and even food are the default norm. It’s being a person who, by unspoken rules, was long entitled as part of “us” instead of “them.”
白意味着属于一个外表、传统、宗教乃至食物都符合默认常规的群体。按照不言而喻的规则，白人意味着是一个长期被称作是“我们”，而不是“他们”中的一份子的人。
But national and racial identity were often conflated for the white majority. That identity felt to many white people like one of the most important pillars holding up their world — and now it seems under threat.
但多数白人常把民族和种族身份混为一谈。对很多白人来说，这种身份感觉像是支撑他们的世界最重要的支柱之一，而现在，它似乎受到了威胁。
There are, of course, complicated contours to 2016’s unusual politics. In Britain, immigrants from South Asia voted heavily to leave the European Union, citing hopes that curtailing European migration might open space for more people from Asia. In the United States, frustration with and alienation from status quo politics have helped drive Mr. Trump’s rise.
当然，2016年不同寻常的政治局势有着复杂的轮廓。在英国，来自南亚的移民投票大力支持退出欧盟，表示希望限制欧洲移民，以便为更多来自亚洲的移民开放空间。在美国，对政治现状的不满与脱离助长了特朗普的崛起势头。
There has also always been a certain fluidity to this concept of whiteness. Irish and Italian immigrants to the United States, and Jews in Britain, were once seen as separate from the white national majority, and are now generally considered part of it, benefiting from racial privilege. At the same time, Jews’ white skin did not protect them from being cast as outsiders by some of Mr. Trump’s supporters who have circulated anti-Semitic memes on social media.
关于“白”的定义总是存在一定程度的不稳定性。美国的爱尔兰与意大利移民，英国的犹太人，都曾一度被排除在白人多数群体之外，如今却因为他们的种族特征，同样被视为白人主流的一部分。与此同时，尽管犹太人也是白皮肤，特朗普的某些支持者们还是会把他们视为外来者，这些人经常在社交网络上散布反犹太的网络米姆。
Still, experts see a crisis of white identity underlying much of the West’s current turmoil.
然而专家却在西方当前的乱象之下看到一种白人身份危机。
“It’s fundamentally about ‘who are we?’” said Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. “What does it mean to be part of this nation? Is it not ‘our’ nation anymore, ‘our’ meaning the ethnic majority?
“这是关于‘我们是谁’的基本问题，”伦敦大学伯克贝克学院的政治学教授埃里克•考夫曼(Eric Kaufmann)说，“作为这个国家的一员意味着什么？它是否已经不再是‘我们’的国家？——‘我们’是指占多数的民族。
“These kinds of questions are really front and center, even though they’re not necessarily verbalized.”
“像这样的问题是极为紧要的，尽管不一定通过言语表达了出来。”
The questions can seem like a sudden reversal after decades of rising multiculturalism, through the civil rights movement in the United States and the European Union’s opening up of borders.
自从美国的民权运动以及欧洲敞开国界以来，多元文化主义已经兴盛数十载，这些问题似乎是一种突然的逆转。
In fact, academic research suggests that other economic and social transformations unfolding at the same time have led many people to anchor themselves more fully in their whiteness — even as whiteness itself has lost currency.
事实上，学术研究表明，同时期的另一种经济与社会转型令许多人更加彻底地用“白”来作为自己的支柱——尽管“白”这个字眼本身已经不常用了。
“When I look at the data, I keep coming back to this issue that it’s really about identity politics,” said Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, a professor at Norway’s University of Bergen who studies Europe’s far-right parties. “This is the most powerful predictor of support for the populists.”
“研究数据时，我不断回到这个问题上来，它其实是个身份政治问题，”挪威卑尔根大学(University of Bergen)研究欧洲极右翼党派的教授伊丽莎白•伊法斯夫拉腾(Elisabeth Ivarsflaten)说。“这是民粹主义者获得支持的最有力的征兆。”
GAINS AND LOSSES IN A CHANGING WORLD
变化世界中的得与失
Identity, as academics define it, falls into two broad categories: “achieved” identity derived from personal effort, and “ascribed” identity based on innate characteristics.
学者们指出，身份认同可以分为两大类，一种是“获得性”的身份认同，基于个人努力；另一种是“先赋性”的身份认同，基于自身天生的特征。
Everyone has both, but people tend to be most attached to their “best” identity — the one that offers the most social status or privileges. Successful professionals, for example, often define their identities primarily through their careers.
所有人身上都存在着这两种认同，但是人们倾向于更认可他们“最好”的身份——也就是能带给他们最高社会地位或特权的认同。举例来说，事业有成的职业人士通常以事业生涯来定义自己的身份。
For generations, working-class whites were doubly blessed: they enjoyed privileged status based on race, as well as the fruits of broad economic growth.
在几代人之中，工薪阶层的白人受到双重赐福：他们既拥有种族所带来的特权地位，也受惠于经济的繁荣发展。
White people’s officially privileged status waned over the latter half of the 20th century with the demise of discriminatory practices in, say, university admissions. But rising wages, an expanding social safety net and new educational opportunities helped offset that. Most white adults were wealthier and more successful than their parents, and confident that their children would do better still.
到了20世纪下半叶，随着歧视逐渐减少（比如在大学入学方面），白人的正式特权地位也在渐渐丧失。但是工资的增长、社会安全网的扩大以及新的受教育机会有助于弥补他们的损失。大多数成年白人都比父母更富裕、更成功，他们相信子女们会过得更好。
That feeling of success may have provided a sort of identity in itself.
这种成功的感觉本身也可以带来一种身份认同。
But as Western manufacturing and industry have declined, taking many working-class towns with them, parents and grandparents have found that the opportunities they once had are unavailable to the next generation.
但是随着西方制造业和工业的衰落，不少工薪阶层市镇也随之衰败，父母和祖父母们发现，下一代已经不能拥有他们曾经拥有的机会了。
That creates an identity vacuum to be filled.
这造成了一种有待填补的身份认同真空。
Arlie Russell Hochschild, the author of “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right,” describes a feeling of lost opportunity as the “deep story” of the rural Louisiana communities she spent four years studying.
《自己土地上的陌生人： 美国右翼的愤怒与哀悼》(Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right)一书的作者阿莉•罗素•霍克希尔德(Arlie Russell Hochschild)对路易斯安那州的农村社区进行了四年的研究，她认为那里“深藏着”一种失去机会的感觉。
Her subjects felt like they were waiting in a long line to reach the top of a hill where the American dream was waiting for them. But the line’s uphill progress had slowed, even stopped. And immigrants, black people and other “outsiders” seemed to be cutting the line.
她笔下的人物们觉得自己为了登上“美国梦”的山巅，经历了漫长的排队等候，但是上山的队伍放慢了速度，甚至停顿下来了。而那些移民、黑人和其他“外来者”似乎还在插队。
For many Western whites, opportunities for achieved identity — the top of the hill — seem unattainable. So their ascribed identity — their whiteness — feels more important than ever.
对于很多西方白人来说，取得“获得性身份认同”（登上山巅）的机会似乎已经变得遥不可及。所以“先赋性身份认同”——也就是他们的“白”——变得比以往更加重要起来。