VOA常速英语:美国种族歧视问题的解决仍需努力

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up... August 29th, 1963, it was a speech that galvanized a nation, and put civil rights and economic justice at the forefront of the American conversation. Race Media and Communication professor from American University, Sherry Williams, What he was really trying to do was achieving racial equality and not just racial equality but also economic justice. We know that right before he died, he was working on the poor people’s campaign, and he was in Memphis working with sanitation workers who were on strike, who were basically just striving for a living wage... Harvard University’s Greg Carr says while there has been some progress, economic disparities still exist. If we look at black America generally economically, a black family in this country, the median wealth of black households for every dollar that a white household has, a black household in this country has about 10 cents. One tenth of the wealth of average white household is a black household. That’s absurd. But the current relatively strong US economy has boosted the job market for all races. The unemployment rate for blacks fell below 6 percent last year, the lowest since 1972.

Still, according to a recent Harvard University study, half of all black Americans report experiencing discrimination in the workplace. Yonis Michelle Read is a software engineer working in Silicon Valley. He says as an African immigrant, he faces the same kind of discrimination as black Americans.
It’s happened in small ways where, you know, you go to a meeting with an investor and you can tell that they, they just don’t want to hear what you try to say. And you know maybe it’s your venture, maybe it’s like what you’re working on. But sometimes you can kind of feel that it’s, it’s just because of you and like your color and they’re not even open to it. They just don’t have to deal with people of color on a regular basis. From my perspective, I just brush it off and I’m just like, okay, not for me, let’s move on.
Police brutality in predominantly African-American communities is another source of concern. The Black Lives Matter Movement that surfaced in 2014 after the shooting in the state of Missouri of a black man by a white police officer has taken up that cause. They open our eyes to everything. They help us understand that while we may not be seen as human or powerful currently, that fruits of our labor will soon come. Being black in America has certainly changed since the famous Martin Luther King Junior “I have a dream” speech. America twice voted for an African-American president in 2008 and again in 2012. But improving race relations as evidenced by a recent resurgence of white supremacy groups have quite a ways to go.
Mohammad Alou VOA news Washington.