热身词语

　　perplexed: confused

　　affected: feel the effects of something

　　overreact: have a stronger reaction to something than the thing deserves

　　Right now I'm a bit perplexed about things going on in my life. I'm affected quite emotionally. A lot of young African-Americans sit around and don't realize that our parents fought for us to be in universities and restaurants. We've become quite comfortable. Some think I'm overreacting. They say, "Dawn, you're too emotional."

　　bad apple: a bad person who makes others like him seem bad

　　In the last two years, I've seen racism and hate, and it disturbs me. I would say that the majority of the people in the world are good-white and black, of all colors. Even here at the university. I think it's always a few bad apples.

　　derogatory: insulting and hurtful

　　identify: the police will ask a victim to choose among several people the person who committed a crime (like robbed the victim or raped the victim) or ask the victim to describe the person

　　testify: go to court and tell the truth about a crime

　　back: support

　　move home: move out of the student dormitory and back to her parents home

　　off (the dormitories): no longer likes the dormitories

　　The problem started when a female black student was walking through the dormitory early in the evening. She was grabbed by asgroupsof white males who said all kinds of derogatory things to her. When she screamed, they ran away. She can identify one of the men, but she won't testify because she's afraid the university will not back her and the guys may come back. So she's moved home, off the dormitories. I said I'd go to the police with her, but she always stands me up. She's afraid and she has every right to be.

　　segregated: in different groups by race 

　　intermingle: mix together; get together

　　I eat with white kids at the cafeteria, but most black students don't. You can see Asian kids in one corner, Hispanics in another, whites, blacks, all pretty well segregated. You have individual intermingling, but not groups.

　　take a stand: refuse to accept a situation that is not right come down on: criticize someone 

　　passive: not willing to take action

　　The feeling has always been there, and I blame myself as well as others for not taking a stand before. My mother has totally come down on me. She's a very strong woman. She raised my brother, my sister, and me by herself. She felt I was too passive.

　　another story: a different situation

　　suburb: small neighborhoods that develop around the edges of cities; in most cases in the US suburbs are the home of middle class or wealthy white people

　　isolated:only experienced their own culture

　　lose out on: the opportunity for…

　　study accounts:study examples of situation in which…

　　Latinos:another word for Hispanics, people who come from South America

　　It's one thing to go to school together, but to live right next to each other, sleep in the same room, that's another story. Most white students come from the suburbs and have been isolated, have not encountered various cultures. I think they've lost out on a lot. And that leads to racism, too. That's why we're pushing for multicultural courses on campus. If you would study accounts where blacks and Asians and Latinos have contributed to society, your respect level would be a lot higher. They just don't know.

　　account: personal story

　　have (their friends) over: ask their friends to come to their room/home

　　Louis Farrakhan: an American black preacher who speaks publicly about race issues

　　Sermon: a talk given by preachers during church

　　Overtone: idea

　　Prince: a singer popular in the US

　　Led Zeppelin: a band popular in the US

　　Clash: disagreement

　　We've had different accounts of the tensions. Some of my friends had problems with white roommates who don't want to listen to their music or have their friends over. There's a cultural gap. I had a friend who listens to Louis Farrakhan. She has tapes of his sermons. When she listens, not loud, it would disturb her roommate. I guess it's because of his black-nationalistic overtones. I pretty much agree with him, but I guess it would probably frighten the average white person. Our music is different, our culture is different. One person might want to listen to Prince, another to Led Zeppelin, and you'd have a clash.

　　endearment: strong positive feelings about someone/something

　　empowerment: the power to achieve what you want

　　I appreciate Farrakhan because he's not afraid to tell the truth. People think he's a racist, but he's not. He has an endearment toward his people and wants to see them with empowerment, with a decent standard of living. I think the average white person is afraid to hear the truth.

　　Anglo: have a British background

　　Jewish people in this country even today are discriminated against. Many people don't consider them Anglo or white. They're considered different.

　　anti-Semitic: the feeling of disliking/hating Jewish people as a group 

　　call: tell the truth about

　　A lot of people think Farrakhan is anti-Semitic. I disagree. He's just calling what he sees. That happens so much in this society, where people have this thing. Many black people feel that Jewish people think they're better and that blacks are on a different level. This feeling exists; we have to be honest.

　　degrading: humiliating, something that takes away a person's dignity Jewish descent: descended (to have ancestors or a history) from Jewish people Holocaust: the program Hitler created during World War II to kill all Jewish people

　　I think Jewish history and black history parallel one another. I had a black professor who said if you want to know success, read Jewish history. They've been through degrading things, starting all the way back from Egypt and upsintosthe forties and Hitler's Germany. The one thing I can respect about people of Jewish descent is that another Holocaust will never happen because they won't let people forget it.

　　celebrate slavery: remember and mark slavery with a ceremony

　　higher ground: a better situation

　　ancestors: your grandfather and grandmother, their grandfather and grandmother, all the way back as far as possible

　　mess with: give someone a difficult time

　　stand one's ground: refuse to be afraid or admit defeat

　　stance: attitude

　　pull at: physically hold on to someone in an unkind way

　　African-Americans have a problem with celebrating slavery. I think if you celebrate what has been, you can move to higher ground. If you can celebrate your ancestors for dying so that you can move ahead, society won't forget it. Nobody is going to try that with Jews anymore, because they're not going to let it. People won't mess with them because they stood their ground. If we take that stance, it won't happen to us again either. If we said, "We're not going to let you pull at our sisters in the dorm, " it wouldn't happen.

　　throw around the terms: carelessly use the words

　　reverse racism: the word racism in the US is usually used to mean unfair treatment of black people by white people; now some white people think government policy treats black people better than white people and call this "reverse racism"

　　prejudge: make a decision about something before you know anything about it

　　I feel that by nature blacks are a forgiving people. They're not racist. I hate it when people throw around the terms reverse racism. I can be prejudiced but not racist. To be a racist, you have to be able to oppress another race. To do that, you have to have economic and political power. Blacks don't have that; whites do. Being prejudiced is something else. You have to prejudge. Many blacks may prejudge whites, because of all their past experiences.

　　beat up: win in a fight with another person

　　mechanic: someone who fixes cars, trucks, tractors, motorcycles, etc.

　　tips: extra money given to someone who provides a service, if you feel they did a good job

　　penny: the smallest amount of US money (for China this would be "fen")

　　For my grandmother or my great-aunts to have any love for the white race, considering what they've done to us, means they have a true forgiving quality within them. We think about those terrible things and they're not too long ago. They're in my mother's history.

　　Her family left the South because her brother, who worked in a gas station, beat up the white boy who tried to take his money. He was a great mechanic and got all his money in tips. He helped take care of the family. How was he gonna let this guy come in and take his money and not have a penny to bring home?

　　antique: old and valuable

　　belongings: personal things (furniture, clothes, etc.)

　　jury: in the US, asgroupsof normal citizens who listen to the evidence during a trial and make a decision if the person is guilty or not

　　judge: the person in a trial who is in charge of the trial; also the person who decides the punishment, if the jury decides the person is guilty

　　passed: dead

　　That day he told my great-grandmother what happened. She didn't waste any time. They left antique furniture, they left most of their belongings. Whatever they could carry, they threw in a bag, got on a train, and came North. He couldn't tell a white jury or a white judge, "I hit him because he tried to steal from me." He wouldn't have been believed. So for my mother, my uncle, or my great-grandmother, who is now passed, to have any love or respect for the white race, it's a quality in us.

　　comprehend: understand

　　The white kids on campus can't quite comprehend this because it's never happened to them. I've had people ask, "Why do you make such a big deal?" They truly don't understand, not that they're racist.

　　claim: say you have an ability or other positive characteristic

　　urban mission: its goals are centered on helping people from cities

　　bridge the gap: find a way to bring two sides which have a big difference closer together through understanding

　　disregard: absolutely not caring at all

　　barbaric: totally uncivilized

　　For one thing, we don't have an African-American cultural center. We've been waiting for one for twenty years. It's a pity for a school that claims to have an urban mission not to have a center that celebrates African history and African art. We wanted to bridge the gap between the black community and the university. What was happening to black and Latino women on the campus was simply a sign of total disregard for us. They disrespect us because they feel we're nothing, were not intellectual, we're barbaric. So we black women like these type of things, like to be grabbed.

　　imbed: plant deep

　　excel:do very well

　　intelligent: smart

　　blonde: yellow-colored hair

　　lack something: not have something that other people do have

　　conditioning: something society tells you over and over and over again

　　I think this is what a lot of whites believe. I think a lot of blacks believe it, too. We've been degraded so much that we have imbedded in our minds that maybe we're not that good. Maybe that's why so many black students don't excel in school. They feel, "I can't do it. I'm not as intelligent as Susie, the blonde sitting next to me. I lack something." If you grow up in the Chicago public-school system and this is taught you, it's eventually going to affect you. It's conditioning.

　　set it up: create a situation

　　people of color: people who have "color" in their skin; anyone who is not white

　　get to the top: become the most or almost the most successful

　　I think society has set it up this way. We don't want to see the true quality of life for everybody. We will let a few people of color-I don't like the word minorities, we're over eighty percent of the world-get to the top. They'll let a couple of us get Ph.D.s, become doctors, lawyers. After that, you have people laying by the wayside, people starving, homeless, without education.

　　full lips: big lips

　　case: example

　　shun: keep away from

　　fair-skinned: lighter colored skin

　　You sit in a class and people tell you if you have full lips, darker skin, look a certain way, you're not pretty. This must affect children. I've seen numerous cases where darker students have been shunned and I've been accepted because I'm fair-skinned. Do we have to look European to be beautiful? That's what TV shows us. It's all over.

　　see: in one's opinion

　　synthesize: create through joining together other ideas

　　I see a country and I see a world that's going to have to change. I truly believe it's too late. We have no spirituality anymore. We have no belief in anything anymore but what we can make, what we can synthesize. We're even trying to make babies different ways but the natural way. We're coming up with all these things that are destroying the earth.

　　ozone layer: a layer of gas surrounding the earth

　　patch up: put a covering over

　　Band-Aids: medical coverings for wounds (e.g. If you cut your finger and it is bleeding a little, you put a Band-Aid on it.)

　　in the end: at last

　　The white man has destroyed the earth. He raped Africa, he raped America. Now we say our ozone layer is ruined. You look outside and it's sixty degrees in December. What are we gonna do, patch it up with Band-Aids? I think the world is going and it's just a matter of time before we all just self-destruct. I think it's over. Maybe that's why so many people are not afraid to stand up-because I truly don't think there's anything to fear in the end.