朱永涛《英语国家社会与文化入门》笔记和考研真题详解(美国的社会问题)【圣才出品】

第10章美国的社会问题10.1 复习笔记I. Racial problems1. A nation of immigrants2. Inequality in American society3. Discrimination against blacks4. T he black “underclass”II. Poverty1. Current situation2. The consequencesIII. Drug abuse1. Current situation2. Social costsIV. Crime1. The profile of a typical criminal2. Racial prejudice in the high rate of arrests3. White-collar crimesV. The abuse of power1. The abuse of power by government2. The abuse of power by corporationsI. Racial problems（种族问题）1. A nation of immigrants（移民之国）(1)The American citizens or their ancestors immigrated from many parts of the globe.①Refugees from religious and political persecution.②Adventurers from the Old World seeking a better life, some fleeing a hopeless economic situation or natural disaster, some wanting greater educational opportunities.③Captives brought to America against their own will to be sold into slavery.(2)Though people all share a common American culture, the nation contains many racial and ethnic subcultures with their own distinctive characteristics.(3)These differences have contributed to racial conflicts that have been a persistent social problem to America.(1)美国是移民之国；美国公民或他们的祖先从世界各地移民到此。

①躲避宗教和政治迫害的难民。

②从旧大陆到此寻求更好生活的探险家,有的是逃离绝望的经济状况或者自然灾害，有的是寻找更好的受教育的机会。

③被抓获并强行贩卖到美洲的奴隶。

(2)尽管人们拥有共同的美国文化，但也包括许多种族和少数民族的亚文化群，这些亚文化都各有特色。

(3)这些差异造成了在美国长期存在的社会问题，即种族冲突。

2. Inequality in American society（不平等现象）(1)America was founded on the principle of human equality, but in practice American society is a stratified one, in which power, wealth, and prestige are unequally distributed, with class divisions often paralleling racial divisions. (2)The first male settlers from “Anglo-Saxon” northwestern Europe quickly took control of economic assets and political power in the United States, and have maintained this control, to a greater or lesser degree.(3)In America, any group other than the dominant white Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority is a minority group. They mainly refer to the blacks, Native Americans or American Indians, the Hispanics, and Asian Americans.(1)美国建立在人人平等的原则之上，但是事实上，美国社会是分层社会，权力、财富以及威望的分配都是不平等的，常常是阶级差异和种族差异并存。

(2)欧洲西北部盎格鲁-撒克逊血统的第一批移民迅速掌握了美国的经济资产和政治权力，并且一直维持着其主导地位，虽然程度上有一定变化。

(3)在美国，除了占多数的信奉新教的盎格鲁-撒克逊血统的白人外，其他人都属于少数民族。

他们主要包括黑人、美洲原住民或美国印第安人、拉丁裔美国人和亚洲裔美国人。

3. Discrimination against blacks（对黑人的歧视）(1)Afro-Americans are the second largest of the racial and ethnic minorities in America, after the Hispanics.(2)Since 1619, they were captured and sold to America as slaves. The whip or the lynch mob served to assert social control over slaves who challenged the established order.(3)The Northern states had all outlawed slavery by 1830, but the Southern states maintained the institution until it was ended by the Civil War, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.(4)After the abolition of slavery, many states passed segregation laws, and institutionalized discrimination kept blacks in the lowest-paid jobs.(5)Literacy tests were a method used to keep blacks off the voters’rolls and prevent them from voting.(6)The civil rights movement in the 1960s ended legal segregation in the South. Also, many black leaders began to disclaim full integration into the American mainstream as the goal of the black minority. They argued that blacks ought to coexist with other groups in mutual respect.(7)The current status of Afro-Americans presents a mixed picture. The elimination of legal barriers to their advancement has been a major gain, but institutionalized discrimination is still rife.(1)非洲裔美国人是美国第二大少数族裔。

位于拉丁裔美国人之后。

(2)从1619年开始，黑人被抓获并贩卖到美洲成为奴隶。

白人种族主义暴徒使用鞭刑和私刑对那些敢于挑战现存秩序的奴隶加强控制。

(3)到1830年，北方各州都已废除了奴隶制，但南方各州仍维持该制度，直到内战，林肯于1863年颁布《解放黑人奴隶宣言》及1865年通过的宪法第13条修正案，奴隶制才被彻底废除。

(4)但奴隶制被废除后，许多州通过了种族隔离法，制度化的种族歧视使黑人只能从事收入最低的工作。

(5)文化水平考试被用来阻止黑人上选民名单，从而阻止他们行使选举权。

(6)从20世纪60年代开始，许多黑人领袖开始否认将完全融入美国主流文化作为黑人的目标。

他们认为黑人应该和其他群体共存，并互相尊重。

(7)黑人目前的状况很复杂，在法律方面，很多阻止黑人进步的障碍被扫除，但是制度性的歧视仍然盛行。

4. The black “underclass”（“最底层”黑人）(1)The majority of the blacks today have failed to share in the general gains made since the 1960s.(2)Urban ghettos now contain a permanently impoverished “underclass” of habitually unemployed or underemployed black people. Many of them are young and unskilled.(3)They live in cities where the unemployment rate for teenage black workers runs as high as 50% or about 8 times the rate for the American work force.(4)This “underclass” could continue to persist, even in the absence of racial discrimination, in much the same way as other pockets of poverty persist—that is, for reasons of social-class inequality.(5)Living in an environment of poverty, decay, crime, drug addiction, joblessness,and hopelessness, this underclass offers an explosive potential for the future.(1)如今，大多数黑人并没有分享到20世纪60年代以来黑人所取得的广泛的成果。