My father was a middle-class black. Though he was born poor, he achieved middle-class standing through much hard work and sacrifice (one of his favorite words) and by identifying fully with solid middle-class values—mainly hard work, family life, property ownership, and education for his children (all four of whom have advanced degrees). In his mind these were not so much values as laws of nature. People who embodied them made up the positive images in his class identification. The negative images came largely from the blacks he had left behind because they were “going nowhere.” 我父亲是一名中产阶级黑人。尽管他出身贫穷，但是他通过勤奋、牺牲（他的口头禅之一）和恪守中产阶级价值观念其主要内容包括：努力工作，注重家庭生活，拥有财产，让孩子接受良好教育(现在他的四个孩子都拥有硕士以上学位），取得了中产阶级社会地位。并且在我父亲看来，与其说这些是价值观念倒不如说它们是自然法则。在父亲的价值观认同上，履行这些价值观念的人构成了他积极效仿的正面形象；他批评的反面形象则大部分来自于底层黑人，因为他们在社会中碌碌无为。 Whether I live up to these values or not, I know that my acceptance of them is the result of lifelong conditioning. I know also that I share this conditioning with middle-class people of all races and that I can no more easily be free of it than I can be free of my race. For the middle-class black, conditioned by these values from birth, the sense of meaning they provide is as immutable as the color of his skin. 无论我自己是否践行这些价值观念，可是我知道我对它们的接受是长期熏陶教育的结果。而且我也知道全世界所有的中产阶级都和我一样被熏陶教育。我不能脱离这样的教育，如同我不能脱离自己的黑人种族身份。对于黑人中产阶级来说，出生伊始便开始接受这些价值观念的教育，这些价值观念所具有的重大意义和我的种族肤色一样永远不会改变。 It has always annoyed me to hear from the mouths of certain arbiters of blackness that middle-class blacks should “reach back” and pull up those blacks less fortunate than they—as though middle-class status were an unearned and essentially passive condition in which one needed a large measure of noblesse oblige to occupy one’s time. My own image is of reaching back from a moving train to lift on board those who have no tickets. A nobel enough sentiment—but might it not be wiser to show them the entire structure of principles, effort, and sacrifice that puts one in a position to buy a ticket any time one likes? This, I think, is something members of the black middle class can realistically offer to other blacks. 本文来源：https://www.wddqw.com/doc/e8a34cc7961ea76e58fafab069dc5022aaea46c8.html