大学英语综合教程第三册 4
[00:00.00] come a long way with each passing year/day/week guarantee result from
[00:06.60]进展 一年一年地 保证 因…而发生
[00:13.19]commitment against(all)the odds remarkable in the midst of
[00:18.16]承诺 尽管极为不利 显著的 在…之中
[00:23.12]recovery in this context flourish remedy
[00:26.50]恢复 在这种情况下 繁荣 纠正
[00:29.88]be subjected to discriminate enforce play up
[00:34.55]使遭受 歧视 实施 鼓吹
[00:39.21]at best unlike do well(to do sth.) grave
[00:50.05]Jesse Jackson,a well-known leader of black Americans,reviews the progress they have made in recent years.
[00:57.50]Despite this,he argues,there is still much left to be done before they enjoy full equality.
[01:04.50]THE DREAM,THE STARS AND DR.KING’ Jesse Jackson
[01:10.58]Last week in Memphis,we commemorated the death of Dr.Martin LUther King.
[01:16.67]He was struck down 27 years ago--not a dreamer,but a man of action.
[01:23.54]We have come a long way since then,in part as a fruit of his labors.
[01:29.78]2 In less than30 years,as schools opened and ceilings lifted,a large African American middle class has been created.
[01:39.21]High school graduation rates,even intelligence test results,grow closer between whites and blacks with each passing year.
[01:48.75]3 The civil-rights movement that Dr.King led also helped women gain greater opportunity.
[01:55.64]The same laws that guarantee equal opportunity for African Americans apply to women,to other minorities,to the disabled.
[02:05.47](1)Our society benefits as fewer of its people have their genius suppressed or their talents wasted.
[02:13.49]4 We have come a long way--but we have far to go .Commission after commission,
[02:20.20]report after report,show that systematic discrimination still stains our country.
[02:27.51]5 African Americans have more difficulty obtaining business loans,buying homes,getting hired.
[02:35.53]Schools and housing patterns are still largely separate and unequal.Women still face glass ceilings in corporate offices.
[02:45.85]Ninety-seven percent of the corporate CEOs of the Fortune 500 are white men.
[02:52.75]That does not result from talent being concentrated among males with pale skin.
[02:58.94]6 Today,Dr.King's legacy--the commitment to take affirmative actions to open doors and opportunity--is under political assault.
[03:08.97]Dr.King worked against terrible odds in a hopeful time.America was experiencing two decades of remarkable economic growth
[03:19.29]and prosperity.It was assumed,as the Kerner Commission made clear,that the"growth dividend"
[03:27.91]would enable us to reduce poverty and open opportunity relatively painlessly.
[03:34.88]But the war on poverty was never fought;instead,the dividend and the growth were squandered in the jungles of Vietnam.
[03:44.13]7 Three decades later,the country is more prosperous but the times are less hopeful.
[03:50.53]Real wages for working people have been declining for 20 years.
[03:56.15]People are scared for good reason,as layoffs rise to record levels even in the midst of a recovery.
[04:04.30]8 In this context,prejudice flourishes,feeding on old hates,keeping alive old fears.
[04:12.50]What else could explain the remarkably dishonest assault on affirmative-action programs
[04:19.47]that seek to remedy stubborn patterns of discrimination?
[04:23.89]9 House Speaker Newt Gingrich,a history professor,sets the tone by simply erasing history.The Washington Post reported:
[04:33.48]"Gingrich dismissed the argument that those who benefit from affirmative action,commonly African Americans,
[04:41.60]have been subjected to discrimination over a period of centuries.That is true of virtually every American,
[04:50.56]Gingrich said,nothing that the Irish were discriminated against by the English,for example."
[04:57.48]10 As Roger Wilkins writes in a thoughtful essay in the Nation magazine,
[05:03.36]this is breathtakingly dishonest for a history professor.Blacks have been on the North American continent for nearly 375 years
[05:13.98]For 245 of those,the country practiced slavery.For another 100 or so,
[05:21.50]segregation was enforced throughout the South and much of the North,often pliced by home-grown terrorists.
[05:29.76]We've had only 30 years of something else,largely the legacy of the struggle led by Dr.King.
[05:37.07]11 The media plays up the "guilt"African Americans supposedly suffer about affirmative action.I can tell you this.
[05:46.27]Dr.King felt no guilt when special laws gave us the right to vote.
[05:51.81]He felt no guilt about laws requiring that African Americans have the opportunity to go to schools,to enter universities,
[06:01.55]to compete for jobs and contraces.This supposed guilt is at best a luvurious anxiety of those
[06:10.67]who now have the opportunity to succeed or fail.
[06:15.39]12 If Dr.King were alive today,he would be 66,younger than Senator Bob Dole who suggests that discrimination ended
[06:25.14]"before we were born." Unlike Dole,Dr.King would be working to bring people together,not drive them apart.
[06:34.65]13 Modern-day conservatives haven't a clue about what to do with an economy
[06:40.18]that is generating greater inequality and reducing the security and living standards of more and more Americans.
[06:48.39]So they seek to distract and divide.
[06:52.38]14 As Dole reaffirmed his abandonment of affirmative action,
[06:57.63]fellow Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas called for more cuts from the poor.
[07:04.30]15 As we head into this troubling time,we would do well to remember Dr.King's legacy.No matter how desperate things were,
[07:13.41]no matter how grave the crisis,no matter how many times his dreams were shattered,Dr.King rufused to grow bitter.
[07:22.45](4)Men and women,he taught,"have the capacity to do right as well as wrong,and[our]history is a path upward,
[07:31.80]not downward.It's only when it is truly dark that you can see the stars."
[07:35.24]充其量 不像 最好 严重的
