The Long, Dark History of Family Separations漫長黑暗的家人分離史

黛比·內森 譯/蔡亦昕

Most of us already know some of what Laura Briggs writes about in Taking Children. Most of us are aware that， for hundreds of years， African-American children were routinely and forcibly separated from their parents on auction blocks. And many know that in the 19th century， Native American children were removed from their fam-ilies and shipped to white-run boarding schools， where they were stripped of their Indigenous clothing， dressed as Westerners， forbidden to speak their native tongues， and kept from their parents for years.

If slave sales and boarding school seizures were the family separations described in Taking Children， the work would read like an A.P.1 high school textbook. But Briggs， a historian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst， also recounts outrages that are only a few decades old. Resurrecting this forgotten history， she demonstrates its continuity with the recent separation of migrant families.

For years in America， unmarried， pregnant white women had been disciplined by being hidden in “homes for unwed mothers” and pressured to relinquish their newborns for adoption. Cloistered and closeted， most of these white women remained invisible， even as unwed-mother homes and adoption agencies wanted nothing to do with pregnant black women. Unmarried African Americans mostly kept their babies， and the families were highly visible.

But as the civil rights movement reached its apex in the 1950s and early 1960s， white supremacists lashed back. Beginning in 1958， the Mississippi legislature started crafting legislation to discipline unwed mothers. One 1964 bill called for charging them with a felony， punishable by sterilization or three years in prison. The de facto targets were black women and their children.

The Mississippi bills did not pass. But other Southern states devised related punishments， using welfare as a tool of social engineering2. In 1957， at the height of Little Rock’s school desegregation fight3， Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus enacted a rule to remove fam-ilies headed by unwed mothers from the welfare rolls. During the same period， Florida ceased to recognize common-law marriages， redefining them as “illicit relationships” and “illegal cohabitation.” Florida and Tennessee defined households headed by unmarried mothers—again， disproportionately black women—as “unsuitable” and kicked the women and their kids off assistance.

Seven Southern states enacted laws along these lines. Briggs documents caseworkers telling mothers that if they wanted to stay on the rolls， they needed to relinquish their sons and daughters to foster care. One of those seven states was Louisiana. In 1960， after New Orleans faced a court decision requiring it to racially integrate city schools， Gov. Jimmie Davis and the legislature announced a “segregation package” of new laws to stop the desegregation order. Most were deemed illegal by the federal courts， but one that survived was a “suitable home” provision intended to prohibit 23，000 children from receiving welfare. Black New Orleans residents considered the rule a political punishment and turned it into a national and international issue. Black civil rights groups and white allies organized “Operation Feed the Babies” to collect food， clothing， and funds for the threatened families. Aid came from as far away as England.

The statute was overturned. But in 1961， the federal Department of Health， Education， and Welfare4 mandated that children could be removed from homes deemed “unsuitable”—including because of a mother’s extramarital sex and cohabitation—if the mom refused to “rehabilitate.” Not until 1968 did the Supreme Court forbid welfare bureaucrats from investigating poor parents’ sex lives. In the meantime， the foster care system swelled with black and brown children.

While compulsory boarding school attendance for Native American children was abolished in the 1930s， Briggs notes that it was quickly replaced： White welfare workers were soon coming on to reservations5 to evaluate children’s need for foster care. Particularly vulnerable to being taken were children whose mothers weren’t married or whose caretakers were extended family， such as grandmothers. （Grandparents were considered too old to raise children.） Again， foster care numbers burgeoned. By the 1970s in North Dakota， Native Americans constituted only 2 percent of the state’s population but half of the children in foster care.

Sustained activism by Native Ameri-cans resulted in the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act， which mandated that tribal governments， not white-dominated county welfare departments， decide whether Native children should stay with their families. But it’s not clear whether the situation improved. One federal study found that a third of Native children were still in out-of-home care in the mid-1980s.

Meanwhile， the separation of American children from their American parents continued with a vengeance6， mainly because of the drug war. This too fell more heavily on the poor， thanks in part to mandatory minimum sentences for possession of crack—a relatively affordable drug—compared to much lighter sentencing for crack’s monied-people cousin， powder cocaine. Black children entered foster care at an alarming pace as crack charges put their parents in prison. Incarceration rates for women tripled in the 1980s， and four out of five black women in jail or prison had children living with them when they were arrested. Today 10 million American kids， including one in nine black children， have a parent who has been locked up.

Briggs also decries the criminalization of pregnant women who test positive for illegal drugs or alcohol. Many of us remember the ’80s and ’90s press panic about “crack babies” with permanently destroyed brains. These babies’ abnormal symptoms turned out to be short-lived and mostly due to other conditions related to their mothers’ poverty. During the same period， fetal alcohol syndrome in newborns became a concern. It’s a medically valid one， although maternal drinking’s worst effects on babies are also tied to poverty. But rather than seeking to address the poverty， authorities arrest the pregnant mothers and take their older children. Native women are disproportionately prosecuted. Briggs notes that the most avid supporters of criminalizing women for mistreating their unborn fetuses are people who are trying to overturn Roe v. Wade7.

大多數美國人對勞拉·布里格斯在《骨肉分離》一書中講述的事情并非一無所知。我們大多知道，數百年來，非洲裔兒童經常被推上拍賣臺被迫與父母分離。也有不少人知道，在19世紀，印第安原住民兒童被帶離自己的家，送進白人開辦的寄宿學校。他們在校不能穿原住民服飾，必須打扮得像個西方人，也不能說自己的母語，并且好幾年見不到父母。

如果這本書講述的骨肉分離只是奴隸買賣和寄宿學校管控，那么它讀起來就會像一本高中先修課程教科書。但布里格斯，這位供職于馬薩諸塞大學阿默斯特分校的歷史學家，在書中也記述了僅僅發生于幾十年前的那些暴行。她揭開了這段塵封的歷史，揭示出近年對移民家庭采取的“分離”政策是它的延續。

在美國，未婚先孕的白人女性多年來一直被秘密送至“未婚媽媽之家”接受訓誡，并且不得不將自己剛剛誕下的孩子交給收養機構。大多數白人未婚媽媽與世隔絕、閉門不出，沒人知道她們的存在。而未婚媽媽之家和收養機構對黑人孕婦卻不聞不問，因而非洲裔未婚媽媽大多能留下自己的孩子，這類家庭十分引人注目。

然而，在20世紀50年代和60年代初，隨著民權運動達到高潮，白人至上主義者展開猛烈報復。自1958年始，密西西比州議會著手制定法律以懲戒未婚母親。1964年的一項法案要求對她們處以重罪，予以絕育或3年監禁的懲罰。這一法案針對的實際上是黑人婦女和她們的孩子。

雖然密西西比州的法案未被通過，但其他南部各州還是將福利救濟作為社會工程的手段，制定了相關懲罰措施。1957年，在小石城學校反種族隔離斗爭最為激烈的關頭，阿肯色州州長奧瓦爾·福伯斯頒布了一項規定，將戶主為未婚母親的家庭從救濟名單中除名。與之同一時期，佛羅里達州不再承認事實婚姻，將其重新定義為“非法關系”和“非法同居”。佛羅里達州和田納西州將未婚母親（也絕大多數是黑人婦女）為戶主的家庭劃定為“不合標準”，不再為這些婦女及其子女提供援助。

美國南部有7個州頒布了類似的法律。布里格斯記錄了當時的情況：一些社會工作者告訴這些未婚媽媽，如果她們想繼續留在救濟名單上，就得將子女寄養。路易斯安那州就是其中之一。1960年，聯邦法院向新奧爾良市下達命令，要求推進市立學校的種族融合。之后，路易斯安那州州長吉米·戴維斯和州議會為了阻止這項命令，宣布了一系列新的種族隔離法令。這些法令中的大多數被聯邦法院裁定為非法，但其中一項“合適家庭令”卻保留下來。此法令意圖將2.3萬名兒童排除在救濟對象之外。在新奧爾良的黑人居民看來，這條法令是一種政治性懲罰，他們將其上升為一個全國性乃至國際性的問題。黑人民權組織與他們的白人盟友發起了“養育嬰兒行動”，為受到威脅的家庭募集食物、衣物和資金。連遠在英國的人們也伸來了援助之手。

“合適家庭令”最終被撤銷。但在1961年，聯邦衛生、教育和福利部下令，如果母親拒絕“改造”，就會把她的孩子從這個“不合適”（被認定為“不合適”的原因包括母親有婚外性行為和同居行為）的家庭中帶走。直到1968年，最高法院才禁止福利部門的官員調查貧困父母的性生活。在此期間，寄養系統中充斥著黑色和棕色皮膚的兒童。

盡管原住民兒童入讀寄宿學校的強制規定于20世紀30年代被廢止，但布里格斯指出，立刻就有另一項舉措取而代之：從事福利救濟工作的白人很快來到保留地，評估兒童的寄養需求。那些母親未婚或是由祖母等大家庭的親屬照料的孩子特別容易被帶走。（祖父母被認為年齡太大，無力撫養孩子。）寄養兒童的人數再次激增。時至20世紀70年代，在北達科他州，美洲原住民僅占該州人口的2%，寄養機構里原住民兒童卻占了一半。

原住民的持續抗爭換來了1978年《印第安兒童福利法》的頒布。該法規定，有權決定原住民兒童是否應該與家人同住的是部落政府，而非白人主導的地方福利部門。但情況是否有所改善，我們并不清楚。一項聯邦調查發現，20世紀80年代中期，1/3的原住民兒童仍舊與家庭分離，接受外人照料。

與此同時，美國兒童與父母的分離主要因為禁毒斗爭的開展而愈演愈烈。窮人家庭再次受到更大打擊，這部分歸因于持有“快克”可卡因（一種相對廉價的毒品）所獲強制性最低刑罰比持有粉狀可卡因（成分與“快克”類似，但價格更高）要重得多。由于父母因“快克”獲罪入獄，送去寄養的黑人兒童人數以驚人的速度增長。20世紀80年代，女性監禁率上升了兩倍，而獄中4/5的黑人女性在被捕之際和孩子一起生活。現如今，父母中有一位正在獄中服刑的美國兒童多達1000萬，黑人兒童中有1/9屬于此類。

布里格斯還譴責了對毒品或酒精檢測呈陽性的孕婦定罪的做法。我們中的許多人還記得，20世紀80年代和90年代，關于“毒品嬰兒”大腦永久性損傷的新聞一度引起恐慌。這些嬰兒的異常癥狀事實上是短期的，而且主要歸咎于母親的貧困所引起的其他問題。同一時期，新生兒患胎兒酒精綜合征也引起了社會關注。這在醫學上得到了確證，但母親飲酒對嬰兒最壞的影響也與貧困有關。然而，當局沒有設法解決貧困問題，反倒逮捕懷孕的母親并帶走她們已經出生的孩子。原住民女性被起訴的比例格外高。布里格斯指出，最熱衷于支持給“虐待”腹中胎兒的女性定罪的人，正是那些試圖為“羅訴韋德案”翻案的人。

（譯者為“《英語世界》杯”翻譯大賽獲獎者）