1.3 A short history of African American


The Northern states had all outlawed (废除) slavery by 1830, but in the Southern states, it was ended by the Civil War Lincoln’s emancipation of slaves in 1863 (1863年林肯颁布的《解放黑奴宣 言》) and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865 （1865年 美国通过的第13条宪法修正案） ---But after the abolition of slavery, many states passed segregation(隔离) laws to keep the races apart in schools, housing, restaurants and public facilities, and institutionalized discrimination kept blacks in the lowest-paid jobs. （制度化的种族歧视使黑人只能干 一些收入最低的工作。）
3. Drug Abuse (滥用毒品)

Drug abuse in the U.S. has come to be regarded as one of the most challenging social problems facing the nation. The drug issue always excites strong emotions of Americans because drug abuse is perceived as a major threat to American society, particularly to its younger members. Drug abuse is a social problem because it has a wide range of social costs.
An example to explain the gap between theHale Waihona Puke poor and the rich

the richest fifth of American individuals and families owns more than three-quarters of the wealth in the U.S., whereas the lowest fifth owns only 0.2% of the wealth. The richest fifth of American families receives over 40% of the national income, whereas the poorest fifth receives only 5.2%.
1.2 Discrimination Against Blacks

Discrimination against blacks: In American society, any group other than the dominant white Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority is a minority group. The largest of the racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. is the blacks who make up about 11.7% of the population. The myth of their racial inferiority was propagated as a justification for their continued subjugation. (所谓黑人种族低 劣的神话被广泛传播，并以此 作为永远奴役黑人的借口)
Sixteenth President 1861-1865
After 1960s, many American blacks began to have a new mood
(1) Blacks felt that the black community ought to coexist with other groups. (2) Blacks felt that “black is beautiful”. (3) Blacks felt more and more proud of themselves

Content
1. Racial Problems 2. Poverty as a social problem 3. Drug Abuse (滥用毒品) 4. Crime 5. the abuse of power 滥用职权

1. Racial Problems 1.1 a nation of immigrants

Though people all share a common American culture, the nation contains many racial and ethnic subcultures with their own distinctive characteristics. (虽然人们有共同的美国文化，但 美利坚民族包含了许多种族和少 数民族的亚文化群)。These differences have contributed to racial conflicts that have been a persistent social problem to American society.（这些差异造 成了在美国社会长期存在的种族 冲突）

the Black “Underclass

The majority of the blacks today have failed to share in the general gains(收获) of progress made recently. The urban ghettosnow contain a permanently impoverished (贫穷 的)“underclass” of habitually unemployed or underemployed black people. Many of them are young and unskilled. They live in cities where the unemployment rate for teenage black workers runs as high as 50% or about 8 times the rate for the American work force as a whole. This “underclass” could continue to persist, even in the absence of racial discrimination, in much the same way as other pockets of poverty persist— that is, for reasons of social-class inequality. Living in an environment of poverty, decay, crime, drug addiction, joblessness, and hopelessness, this ghetto underclass offers an explosive potential for the future.
Drug is closely related with



a. crime, b. automobile accidents c. serious effects on individuals physically and mentally d. the economic losses caused by drug abuse are great.
2. Poverty as a social problem





The U.S is one of the most wealthy countries in the world. Yet over 24 million people or about 10% of the population are living at or below the official poverty line, on incomes that the federal government considers insufficient to meet basic requirement of food, clothing, and shelter. There are millions more, living slightly above the poverty line, whose plight is not much better. Also, the social services in the U.S compare unfavorably with those in most industrialized societies. Furthermore, the affluent majority seems indifferent to the problems of the poor. This raises some serious moral problems and inevitably creates fierce conflicts of interest and many political controversies. Therefore, poverty in the U.S becomes a social problem.