美国人民有多解放？.docVIP

奥巴马总统第二次宣誓就职的同时，美国人也在庆祝其他重要纪念日。但是乐土依然遥不可及。人们常说自由不是免费的，解放也不是，解放的代价是现状被改变。解放美国这样一个实行过奴隶制的国度需要的远远不止一个宣言。 美国人民有多解放？ Inauguration Day approaches, and were all familiar by now that 2013 kicks off with the second inauguration of Barack Obama, on?Martin Luther King Day, which also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the?March on Washington, and?the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. So many anniversaries. Is it just a curious coincidence? The connections are deeper than that. Eleanor goes on to describe how she and her husband worked to buy a home, the deed to which she finally lost in a mortgage scam in the 1800s. Sound familiar? There was no welcome for the freed men and women of the 1860s, either. As Angela Davis and Michelle Alexander (author of?The New Jim Crow) have written, at exactly the time that former slaves were setting up their own communities and planting their own crops, the old slave-holding elites passed anti-vagrancy laws, which essentially made it a criminal offense to be self-employed or not working for a (white) boss. Easily arrested and convicted under the new laws, black prisoners were forced to work for little or no pay, writes Alexander. The 13th amendments anti-slavery provisions make a convenient exception for prison work. The picture is revealing. Last year, researchers at the?Insight Center for Community Economic Development, based in Oakland,?reported (pdf)?that the median household wealth of a working-age African American woman was $100, compared to $42,600 for the equivalent white woman (or 40% more than that for a white man). Its amazing the difference that centuries of supremacy make. We could do with another march, but more importantly, another movement with equal punch. People like to say freedom isnt free. But neither is emancipation: it costs the status quo. Emancipating a former slave state like ours takes a whole lot more than a declaration. Were not there yet. 解放？听上去很不错。 美国总统宣誓就职日近了[1]，我们都很