Question

求高手翻译，不要翻译机的翻译

The point was difficult to miss: nurture (养育), not nature, was the key to social status. The features of the black man that provided the stuff of prejudice—manner of speech, for example—were, to Twain, indicative of nothing other than the conditioning that slavery forced on its victims.
Twain’s racial tone was not perfect. One is left uneasy, for example, by the lengthy passage in his autobiography (自传) about how much he loved what were called “nigger shows” in his youth—mostly with white men performing in black-face—and his delight in getting his mother to laugh at them. Yet there is no reason to think Twain saw the shows as representing reality. His frequent attacks on slavery and prejudice suggest his keen awareness that they did not.
Was Twain a racist? Asking the questioning the 21 stcentury is as wise as asking the same of Lincoln. If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the “wisdom” of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error. Lincoln, who believed the black man the inferior of the white, fought and won a war to free him. And Twain, raised in a slave state, briefly a soldier, and inventor of Jim, may have done more to anger the nation over racial injustice and awaken its collective conscience than any other novelist in the past century.

Answer 1

啊 原来可以在这里回答。晕。

…我们西方文学选读课天天看这个，哈。痛苦~~~~

有些地方调整了一下哈。希望能帮到你~

重点显而易见：自致性而非先赋性因素，才是决定社会地位的关键。黑人那些为偏见提供素材的特点——比如说话方式——在吐温看来，只是奴隶制强加在牺牲品身上的一种烙印罢了。吐温的种族性语调并不完美无缺。我们会觉得不舒服，比如说，在读到他自传里那些长篇大论时。它们讲他年少时有多爱看“黑鬼表演”（一般都是由把脸涂黑的白人表演的），以及他妈妈嘲笑那些演员时他有多高兴。但没有理由断定吐温当时觉得那些表演反映了现实。他频繁批判奴隶制与（种族）偏见，这些批判恰恰告诉我们他清楚地知道那些表演并非现实。

马克吐温是个种族歧视者吗？在21世纪问这个问题就好像在问林肯是不是种族歧视者一样“智慧”。如果我们透过当今道德标准的那种“智慧”去看过去的语句与态度，那么我们找到的将只有错误。林肯相信黑人比白人低劣，却领导并赢得了黑奴解放战争的胜利；而在奴隶制度的背景下被养大的吐温，这位有着短暂军人生涯的人，这位吉姆的创造者，也许比过去一个世纪里任何一位小说家都更成功地激起了美国上下对种族歧视的愤怒，更成功地唤醒了美国民众的集体良知。