| 阅读理解  The campaign is over．The celebrations have ended．And the work for US president-elect Barack Obama has begun． The 47-year-old politician rose to the highest post because of his stand against the war in Iraq and his plans to fix a weak economy．But what will the first 47-year-old African-American president do for race relations? Obama’s victory appears to have given blacks and other minorities a true national role model．For years many looked to athletes and musicians for inspiration．As Darius Turner an African-American high school student in Los Angeles told the Los Angeles Times “Kobe(the basketball player)doesn’t have to be everybody’s role model anymore．” Recent polls(民意测验)also suggest that Obama’s victory has given Americans new optimism about race relations．For example a USA Today poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe relations between blacks and whites“will finally be worked out”．This is the most hopeful response since the question was first asked during the civil rights revolution in 1963． However it’s still too early to tell whether Obama’s presidency will begin to solve many of the social problems facing low-income black communities． Although blacks make up only 13 percent of the US population 55 percent of all prisoners are African-American．Such numbers can be blamed on any number of factors on America’s racist past a failure of government policy and the collapse(瓦解)of the family unit in black communities． It is unlikely that Obama will be able to reverse(扭转)such trends overnight．However Bill Bank an expert of African-American Studies says that eventually young blacks need to find role models in their own communities．“That’s not Martin Luther King and not Barack Obama ”he told the Los Angeles Times．“It’s actually the people closest to them．Barack only has so much influence．” In the opinion of black British politician Trevor Phillips Obama’s rise will contribute more to multiculturalism than to race relations in the US． |