Unit-12-A-Case-of-“Severe-Bias”课文翻译综合教程四

Unit-12-A-Case-of-“Severe-Bias”课文翻译综合教程四

Unit 12

A Case of \

Patricia Raybon

1 This is who I am not. I am not a crack addict. 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.

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,

addicted,

and

dysfunctional. Indeed, media coverage of black America is so one-sided, so imbalanced that the most victimized

and 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.

4 In recent months, I have observed a steady offering of media reports on crack babies, gang warfare, violent youth, poverty, and homelessness － and in most cases, the people featured in the photos and stories were black. At the same time, articles that discuss other aspects of American life － from home buying to medicine to technology to nutrition － rarely, if ever, show blacks playing a positive role, or for that matter, any role at all.

5 Day after day, week after week, this message － that black America is dysfunctional and unwhole － gets transmitted

across

the

American

landscape. Sadly, as a result, America

never learns the truth about what is actually a wonderful, vibrant, creative community of people.

6 Most black Americans are not poor. Most black teenagers are not crack addicts. Most black mothers are not on welfare. Indeed, in sheer numbers, more white Americans are poor and on welfare than are black. Yet one never would

deduce

or

that

by

watching American

television

reading

newspapers and magazines.

7 Why do the American media insist on playing this myopic, inaccurate picture game? In this game, white America is always whole and lovely and healthy, while black America is usually sick and pathetic and deficient. Rarely, indeed, is black America ever depicted in

the

media

as

functional

and

self-sufficient. The free press, indeed, as the main interpreter of American

culture and American experience, holds the mirror on American reality － so much so that what the media say is is, even if it’s not that way at all. The media are guilty of a severe bias and the problem screams out for correction. It is worse than simply lazy journalism, which is bad enough; it is inaccurate journalism.

8 For black Americans like myself, this isn’t just an issue of vanity － of wanting to be seen in a good light. Nor is it a matter of closing one’s eyes to the very real problems of the urban underclass － which undeniably is disproportionately black. To be sure, problems besetting the black underclass deserve the utmost attention of the media, as well as the understanding and concern of the rest of American society. 9 But if their problems consistently are presented as the only reality for