综合教程第四册Unit 12 Text I--A Case of Severe Bias 词汇 .pdfVIP

A CASE OF “SEVERE BIAS” Patricia Raybon 1 This is who I am not. I am not a crack a ict. I am not a welfare mother. I am not illiterate. I am not a prostitute. I have never been in jail. My children are not in gangs. My husband doesn’t beat me. My home is not a tenement. None of these things defines who I am, nor do they describe the other black people I’ve known and worked with and loved and befriended over these forty years of my life. ◆ welfare mother: welfare queen is a pejorative phrase use in the Unite States to refer to people, usually women, who are accused of collecting excessive welfare payments through frau or manipulation. ◆ tenement: n. 1) a large building divided into flats/apartments, especially in a poor area of a city (尤指城市贫困区的)经济公寓，廉价公寓 e.g. a tenement block 经济住宅街区 2 Nor does it describe most of black America, period. 3 Yet in the eyes of the American news media, this is what black America is: poor, criminal, a icted, an dysfunctional. Indeed, media coverage of black America is so one-sided, so imbalance that the most victimize an hurting segment of the black community － a small segment, at best － is presented not as the exception but as the norm. It is an insidious practice, all the uglier for its blatancy. ◆ dysfunctional: adj. (technical) not working normally or properly 机能失调的；功能障碍的 e.g. children from dysfunctional families 有缺陷家庭的子女 ◆ coverage: n. (U) 1) the reporting of news an sport in newspapers an on the radio an television 新闻报道 e.g. media/newspaper/press coverage 媒体/报纸/报刊的报道 tonight’s live coverage of the hockey game 今晚曲棍球比赛的现场直播 2) the range or quality of information that is include in a book or course of study, on television, etc. (书、课程学习、电视等的)信息范围，信息质量 e.g. magazines with extensive coverage of diet and h