When American children are taught about the Civil Rights Era, the focus tends to be on laws like Jim Crow, people like Bull Conn

admin2019-06-20  16

问题    When American children are taught about the Civil Rights Era, the focus tends to be on laws like Jim Crow, people like Bull Connor and Martin Luther King Jr. , and issues like equality and justice.
   The thinking goes today, to simplify the reasoning on the right and among libertarians, that those times were long ago, the laws are gone, Bull Connor and his ilk are long dead, and we have fairness before the law and everything else is just a matter of applying oneself now.
   But the changes from those times have, in fact, been gradual. There’s nothing to indicate, and certainly no defining moment, when racism ceased to be a problem for blacks and other minorities in America. Coming as far as the nation has in a relatively short amount of time is impressive, given the way racism was ingrained in the American culture, politics, and education. But part of that progress was due to the explicit societal and governmental acknowledgement that laws and society made life very unfair for a segment of the population. We’re getting to a point where that recognition is becoming less and less obvious, and the remnants of centuries of racism linger and continue to affect millions of Americans.
   After all, if equality were simply a matter of codification, Jim Crow never would have happened. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments should have rectified the legal disparities that affected black Americans, but it took more than a century for Congress to pass legislation to say "No, we really mean it. "
   But then, given the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence—that all men were created equal is a self-evident truth—why were those amendments necessary in the first place? Though the Declaration was never legally binding, its opening lines became the primary and guiding principle of the nation. What gives?
   The answer is simple: American rhetoric and law has been hypocritical since its inception and nowhere has this been more evident than in legal protections and law enforcement for black people.
   Black Americans have, for the entire history of this country, faced a legal system that treats them differently than white citizens. It’s gotten better, sure, but this enduring legal double standard demands closer examination.
The word "rhetoric" in Paragraph 6 refers to______.

选项 A、the art of using language so as to persuade or influence others
B、a figure of speech, e. g. personification
C、eloquent speech or writing
D、persuasive looks or acts

答案A

解析 词义理解题。文章讲,美国法律制度写明“人人生而平等”,但实际却不曾给予黑人法律上的平等保护。rhetoric含有言行不一的意思,故答案为[A]项。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/2Pra777K
0

随机试题
最新回复(0)