2. 外语
  3. For years scholars have contrasted slavery in the United States and in Brazil, stimulated by the fact that racial patterns assum

For years scholars have contrasted slavery in the United States and in Brazil, stimulated by the fact that racial patterns assum

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问题     For years scholars have contrasted slavery in the United States and in Brazil, stimulated by the fact that racial patterns assumed such different aspects in the two countries after emancipation. Brazil never developed a system of rigid segregation of the sort that replaced slavery in the United States, and its racial system was fluid(a situation that is fluid is likely to change)because its definition of race was based as much on characteristics such as economic status as on skin color. Until recently, the most persuasive explanation for these differences was that Portuguese institutions especially the Roman Catholic church and Roman civil law, promoted recognition of the slave’s humanity. The English colonists, on the other hand, constructed their system of slavery out of whole cloth(whole cloth: pure fabrication usually used in the phrase out of whole cloth). There were simply no precedents in English common law, and separation of church and state barred Protestant clergy from the role that priests assumed in Brazil.
    But the assumption that institutions alone could so powerfully affect the history of two raw and malleable frontier a new field for exploitative or developmental activity. Countries seem, on reexamination, untenable. Recent studies focus instead on a particular set of contrasting economic circumstances and demographic profiles at significant periods in the histories of the two countries. Persons of mixed race quickly appeared in both countries. In the United States they were considered to be Black, a social definition that was feasible because they were in the minority. In Brazil, it was not feasible. Though intermarriage was illegal in both countries, the laws were unenforceable in Brazil since Whites formed a small minority in an overwhelmingly Black population. Manumission for persons of mixed race was also easier in Brazil, particularly in the nineteenth century when in the United States it was hedged about with difficulties. Furthermore, a shortage of skilled workers in Brazil provided persons of mixed race with the opportunity to learn crafts and trades, even before general emancipation, whereas in the United States entry into these occupations was blocked by Whites sufficiently numerous to fill the posts. The consequence was the development in Brazil of a large class of persons of mixed race, proficient in skilled trades and crafts, who stood waiting as a community for freed slaves to join.
    There should be no illusion that Brazilian society after emancipation was color-blind. Rather, the large population of persons of mixed race produced a racial system that included a third status, a bridge between the Black caste and the White, which could be traversed by means of economic or intellectual achievement, marriage, or racial heritage. The strict and sharp line between the races so characteristic of the United States in the years immediately after emancipation was simply absent. With the possible exception of New Orleans, no special "place" developed in the United States for persons of mixed race.
    Sad to say, every pressure of society worked to prevent their attaining anything approximating the economic and social position available to their counterparts in Brazil.
In the passage, the author is primarily concerned with______.
选项 A、contrasting the systems of slavery that were established in Brazil and in the United States
B、criticizing the arguments of those scholars who considered religion and law to be the determinants of the systems of slavery in Brazil and in the United States
C、describing the factors currently thought to be responsible for the differences in the racial patterns that evolved in Brazil and in the United States
D、advocating further study of the differences between the racial systems that developed in Brazil and in the United States
答案C
解析 主旨归纳题。文章开篇提出“奴隶解放后，巴西没什么歧视，美国则有严重的歧视”的现象，接着在机制、经济和人群等方面围绕这个问题进行论述。故答案为C。
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