Shane Gillis, a 31-year-old stand-up comedian who was named last week to the “Saturday Night Live” cast. He has called it a “hassle” to have to speak with a waiter in a Chinese restaurant. He has used a racial slur to refer to the entrepreneur Andrew Yang.
《周六夜现场》(Saturday Night Live)上周宣布的演员阵容中有31岁的单口滑稽演员肖恩・吉利斯(Shane Gillis)。他称在中国餐馆与服务员交流很“困难”。他在提到企业家杨安泽(Andrew Yang)时，使用过一个带种族侮辱的词语。
And in response, Mr. Yang, who has emerged as one of just a handful of viable Asian-American candidates ever to seek a major party’s nomination for president, has preached forgiveness.
杨安泽是少数几个寻求获得主要政党总统候选人提名可行的亚裔美国人之一，他对吉利斯的回应是宣扬宽宏大量。
“Shane ― I prefer comedy that makes people think and doesn’t take cheap shots. But I’m happy to sit down and talk with you if you’d like,” he said in a tweet over the weekend. “For the record, I do not think he should lose his job. We would benefit from being more forgiving rather than punitive. We are all human.”
“肖恩――我更喜欢的喜剧是能让人们思考的那种，而不是恶意中伤。但如果你愿意，我乐意坐下来和你聊聊，”杨安泽在周末发的一个推文中说。“需要强调的是，我不认为他应该丢掉他的工作。我们都将受益于更多的宽容而不是惩罚。我们都是人。”
But lose his job Mr. Gillis did. On Monday afternoon, “S.N.L.” announced that he would not be joining the show, and in a statement, called his language “offensive, hurtful and unacceptable.”
不过，吉利斯还是丢了工作。周一下午，《周六夜现场》在一份声明中宣布他将不再加入这个节目，声明说他的语言“无礼、伤人、不可接受”。
Then, about an hour after the announcement, Mr. Yang tweeted again, suggesting that Mr. Gillis had taken him up on his offer to talk things out.
然后，在消息公布大约一个小时后，杨安泽又发了一条推文，暗示吉利斯接受了自己的邀请，愿意坐下来讨论事情。
”Shane Gillis reached out,” Mr. Yang said. “Looks like we will be sitting down together soon.”
“肖恩・吉利斯表示愿意，”杨安泽说。“看来我们很快就要一起坐下来了。”
A spokesman for Mr. Yang did not have any comment on Mr. Gillis’s departure from the show on Monday night. Nonetheless, the dayslong ordeal with its swift and sudden turn has had the side effect of thrusting Mr. Yang, a long-shot candidate with a loyal following, into the spotlight and placing him at the center of a national conversation about, racism, outrage culture and absolution.
周一晚间，杨安泽的发言人对吉利斯不会在《周六夜现场》出现的宣布未发表任何评论。尽管如此，这场持续了几天的难堪及其迅速且突然的转变已经产生了一种副作用，那就是把公众关注的目光投向了杨安泽这个成功希望不大，但有一批忠诚追随者的候选人，将他置于一场有关种族主义、愤怒文化和赦罪的全国性讨论的中心。
For more than a year, Mr. Yang, 44, has built support from outside the political establishment by purposely staying above the political fray, posting videos of himself having fun playing basketball and preaching “humanity first” as a central tenet of his campaign. His response to Mr. Gillis over the weekend echoed those inviting approaches.
一年多来，44岁的杨安泽通过有意把自己置于政治纷争之上，在政治势力集团以外的人当中争取到了支持，他在网上发布自己打篮球取乐的视频，将“把人放在首位”(humanity first)宣传为他竞选的一个核心原则。他周末对吉利斯的回应呼应了这些吸引人的做法。
But as many “S.N.L.” viewers and others across the country clamored for Mr. Gillis to be fired, believing his jokes to be beyond excusable, Mr. Yang’s response unnerved those hoping for a more forceful condemnation from him. Perhaps the most pointed criticism has come from the Asian-American community itself, where some have expressed a mix of incredulity and weighty disappointment at the way Mr. Yang has talked about race throughout his campaign.
但就在许多《周六夜现场》的观众以及全国各地的其他人大声要求解雇吉利斯，认为他的笑话超出了可原谅的范围时，杨安泽的回应让那些希望他做出更有力谴责的人感到不安。也许，最尖锐的批评来自亚裔美国人社区本身，这个社区中有些人对杨安泽在整个竞选过程中谈论种族的方式或表示某种惊疑，或表示严重的失望。
Mr. Yang took “a position that’s very much at odds with the Asian-American community,” said Jenn Fang, the creator of a long-running Asian-American advocacy blog, Reappropriate, who tweeted over the weekend about Mr. Yang’s comments. “He’s trying to let Shane Gillis off the hook so he can cater to other voters that he needs to get to the White House.”
杨安泽采取了“与亚裔美国人社区有很大分歧的立场”，运行了很久的倡导亚裔美国人权益的博客Reappropriate的创始人詹・方(Jenn Fang)说，她周末发了关于杨安泽对此事评论的推文。“他正在试图让肖恩・吉利斯逃脱惩罚，这样他就能迎合他入主白宫所需的其他选民。”
Mr. Yang also received significant blowback from people within and outside Asian-American communities for appearing to draw a comparison between how society treats anti-Asian racism and anti-black racism.
杨安泽也受到了来自亚裔美国人社区内外人士的强烈反冲，因为他似乎把社会针对亚洲人的种族主义与针对黑人的种族主义的方式进行比较。
“Anti-Asian racism is particularly virulent because it’s somehow considered more acceptable,” Mr. Yang argued on Twitter. “If Shane had used the n word, the treatment would likely be immediate and clear.”
“针对亚洲人的种族主义尤其有害，因为由于某种原因人们认为它更容易被接受，”杨安泽在Twitter上写道。“如果肖恩使用了那个n打头的词，对他的处理很可能是立刻和明确的。”
As one of three remaining candidates in the race who do not have a background in politics, Mr. Yang has won fans by speaking off the cuff and peppering his stump speech with sometimes self-deprecating humor. Because he has made automation and concern over mass unemployment central themes of his candidacy, he has won the support of some young, white, male Trump voters while at the same time attracting progressives and a significant share of Asian-Americans ― all groups he seeks to hold together under the apolitical campaign catch phrase “Not left, not right, but forward.”
作为仍在参选的三名没有政治背景的候选人之一，杨安泽用即兴演讲和在巡回演说中穿插的一些有时自嘲的幽默赢得了粉丝。由于他把自动化和大规模失业的担忧作为参选的中心议题，从而赢得了一些支持特朗普的年轻白人男性选民，同时吸引了进步人士和很大一部分亚裔美国人，他寻求用非政治但很上口的政治口号“不左不右，一致向前”让这些群体保持团结。
But his handling of race has sometimes undermined that careful balancing act and raised the concerns among some who say he has been too willing to lean in to stereotypes about Asian-Americans to win support. His biggest applause line remains “The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math”; in front of a national television audience during the debate last week, he observed, “I am Asian, so I know a lot of doctors.”
但他对种族问题的处理有时已破坏了这种谨慎的平衡，并在一些人中引发了担忧，这些人说，为了赢得支持，他一直过于愿意向亚裔美国人的刻板印象靠拢。他赢得最大掌声的台词仍是“唐纳德・特朗普的对立面是一个喜欢数学的亚洲人”；在上周的辩论中，他当着全国电视观众的面说，“我是亚洲人，所以我认识很多医生。”
In tweets, Mr. Yang also reiterated that he had been the target of racial epithets in the past. Asked about his jokes about liking math and knowing doctors, he has maintained that the Asian-American community is diverse, that his individual experience does not speak for everyone and that Americans are smart enough to see through the model minority myth, which overgeneralizes Asians as diligent and high-achieving.
杨安泽在推文中还重申，自己过去一直被人用种族歧视性字眼。在被问及他喜欢数学和认识医生的玩笑时，他坚持认为，亚裔美国群体是多样化的，他的个人经历不足以代表每个人，美国人也足够聪明，能看穿模范少数族裔的迷思，即笼统地认为亚裔都勤奋、成绩好。
In an interview on Monday with The New York Times just hours before Mr. Gillis was dropped from “S.N.L.,” Mr. Yang said he had not meant to compare his experience as an Asian-American to “the experience of growing up black in this country.” He said he had intended only to make an “observation” about anti-Asian racism and the fact that it is not always taken seriously.
在吉利斯被《周六夜现场》开除前几小时杨安泽接受《纽约时报》采访时表示，他的本意不是要把自己作为亚裔美国人的经历与“这个国家的黑人成长经历”相提并论。他说，自己原本只是想就反亚裔种族主义及这个问题往往不受重视来谈点“看法”。
Mr. Yang said he and his wife had sat down to watch Mr. Gillis’s comedy routines for 30 minutes to an hour and had concluded that he was not “malignant or evil.” He also said he had resisted sending a tweet containing an explicative that would have more forcefully expressed his anger at Mr. Gillis.
杨安泽称，他和妻子坐下来，用半小时到一小时的时间看了吉利斯的喜剧节目，得出的结论是，他“没有恶意也不邪恶”。他还表示自己按下了发一条阐释性推文的想法，那会更有力地表达他对吉利斯的不满。
“There’s a complex set of reactions one has,” Mr. Yang said.
“人会有一系列复杂的反应，”杨安泽说。
He said that someone had yelled a slur at him out a car window “just the other day” and added that he had talked to his wife about the experience. He said they had bemoaned the fact that such a slur could eventually be directed at one of their boys.
他表示“就在前几天”，曾有人在车窗外对他喊了一句侮辱性的话，还说他跟妻子讨论了这件事。他说让他痛心的是，这样的侮辱言辞可能最终会用到他的孩子身上。
Mr. Yang also denied that there were any politics at play. “This is both how I genuinely see this and what I think is best,” he said. “I totally respect people who have different points of view.”
杨安泽还否认其中有任何政治因素在起作用。“这既是我的真实看法，也是我认为最好的方式，”他说。“我完全尊重持有不同意见的人。”
Danielle Seid, an assistant professor of English at Baruch College who studies film and television history, said Mr. Yang had definitely found himself “in a tough spot.” He had been right to point out that anti-Asian racism has often not been treated seriously, she said, but he may not have done “a good job of parsing that with his tweets about the n-word.”
巴鲁克学院(Baruch College)研究影视历史的助理教授丹尼尔・赛义德(Danielle Seid)表示，杨安泽无疑发现自己“处境艰难”。她说，他指出针对亚裔的种族主义往往不受重视是对的，但“关于N打头那个字眼的推文，却没有很好地分析这一点”。
Mr. Yang’s comments could have been read as an argument that “Asians have it worse” than other minority groups, when “it’s pretty clear that, in terms of racist policies and practices and culture in the United States, so much of it is founded on anti-black racism,” said, Ellen Wu, an associate professor of history at Indiana University.
杨安泽的言论可能会被解读为，他认为比起其他少数群体的歧视问题，“亚裔情况更糟”，因为“很明显，就美国的种族主义政策、做法和文化而言，太多都基于反黑人种族主义”，印第安纳大学历史学副教授艾伦・吴(Ellen Wu)说。
At a broader level, both Professor Seid and Professor Wu said Mr. Yang’s high profile had made him something of a spokesman for the Asian-American community. As such, Professor Seid said she wished Mr. Yang had been “more forceful in condemning Mr. Gillis’s ‘jokes’ and taken the opportunity to congratulate Bowen Yang,” one of the show’s writers who was also elevated to a featured performer’s position.
在更广泛的层面上，赛义德和艾伦・吴都认为，杨安泽的知名度多少让他成为亚裔美国群体的代言人。正因为如此，赛义德表示，她希望杨安泽当初能“更有力地谴责吉利斯的‘玩笑’，并借机祝贺杨伯文(Bowen Yang)”，后者是这档节目的编剧之一，现被提升到特约表演者的位置。
Kevin Xu, a co-host of the Model MAJORITY Podcast and a former Obama White House staff member, said he had wanted Mr. Gillis to lose his job “because he is racist and not funny.”
Model MAJORITY播客（意指“模范多数族裔”――译注）搭档主持人、奥巴马时期前白宫工作人员凯文・徐(Kevin Xu)表示，他曾希望吉利斯丢掉工作，“因为他是个种族主义者，而且不好笑。”
But he defended Mr. Yang’s handling of the situation. Given that Mr. Yang is a candidate for president, Mr. Xu said he believed it was appropriate for him to “take the high road.”
但他为杨安泽的处理方式进行了辩护。鉴于杨安泽总统候选人的身份，凯文・徐称他“采取高姿态”是合适的。
“This is the best way he could have handled something like this,” Mr. Xu said. “I think over all he’s doing a pretty good job owning up to his minority status while still doing what he needs to do to run for president.”
“这是他处理这类事情的最好方式，”凯文・徐说。“我认为他总体上做得很好，一面坦白承认自己的少数族裔地位，一面仍做着竞选总统需要做的事情。”
“I don’t think that, for someone like him ― just like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or any other historical candidate trying to break any sort of ceiling ― they can do this perfectly,” Mr. Xu added. “It’s a very, very high-wire act. It’s very hard.”
“我不认为，像他这样的人――可以像贝拉克・奥巴马或希拉里・克林顿或任何其他往届候选人那样，试图打破任何一种天花板――他们可以很好地做到这一点，”凯文・徐补充说。“这是一种风险非常、非常大的行为。难度很大。”