题目内容
I find it easiest to look forward by looking back to the "Great Labor Migration" of 1948-55, seen at the time as a matter of black guests coming to a white host. It's a quasi-imperial perception that has shifted since the 1970s, but the social problems and deficiencies it engendered dog us still①.
It's highly questionable whether Britain is an open society even now. Against the upward trend in the 1980s of ethnic minorities breaking into the professions and the media must be set objective evidence of a very racist society. Since the Stephen Lawrence affair the government has at least been talking about the existence of racism, but it's always the case that racism diminished in times of prosperity. When the economic going gets tough, people want someone to take their feelings out on.
The social landscape seems to me at a surreal crossroads. Britain fosters images of itself as homogenous, to be white is no longer the central defining feature, but there remain various kinds of "Britishness". So I can envisage the future in two very different ways.
The first is broadly the way Britain is at the moment: a mosaic of communities: Bangladeshi, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese or Jewish holding fast to a strong social identity, but lumbered also with a whole raft of benefits and disadvantages, most of them defined in economic terms. It's possible that will still be the pat tern in 50 years time, but not very likely. Instead, I expected the old duality of a "host community" and "immigrants" whose bad luck it is to be excluded and disadvantaged to have vanished. Some ethnic communities may make a point of survival, but only those who are most proud of their cultural roots.
The alternative is a pick-and-mix social landscape. At the moment ethnic minorities are moving in different directions at different rates, with personal and social engagement across ethnic boundaries increasing all the time. One crude indicator is the level of mix-race marriage: one in five Bangladeshi and Pakistani men born in Britain now has a white with, and one in five babies born in Britain has one Afro-Caribbean and one white parent.
This implies a Britain in which people will construct multiple identities defined by all sorts of factors: class, ethnicity, gender, religion, profession, culture and economic position. It won't be clear-cut. Not all ethnic, minorities, or members of an ethnic minority, will be moving in the same direction of identifying the same issues at the heart of their identities. It's about deciding who you are, but also about how other people define you.
That's what will be at the heart of the next 50 years: enduring communities linked by blood through time versus flexible, constantly shifting identities. Identity won't be about where you have come from; it will be a set of values you can take anywhere that is compatible with full participation in whichever society you live in②.
What does the term "dog" in Line 3, Para. 1 most possibly mean？
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
Come September, the campuses of America will be swarming not just with returning undergraduates, but also with employers set on signing up the most able 10% of them. "We are seeing a far more competitive market for talent," says Steve Candle, a recruitment manager at General Electric (GE). Students who recently could have expected two or three offers in their final year are now getting as many as five. To gain a competitive edge, firms are arriving ever earlier on campus with their recruitment caravans. They also start to look at (and select) summer interns more as potential full-time employees than as mere seasonal extra hands: 60% of GE's graduate recruits in America this year, for instance, will come from its crop of more than 2,000 interns①. Many interns will have employment contracts in their pockets before they even return for their final year of study.
Firms are working harder to polish their image in the eyes of undergraduates. Some have staff who de little but tour campuses throughout the year, keeping the firm's name in front of both faculty and students, and promoting their "employer brand". GE focuses on 38 universities where it actively promotes itself as an employer. Pricewaterhousecoopers (PWC), an accounting firm, targets 200 universalities and gives a partner responsibility for each. PWC says that each of its partners spends up to 200 hours a year "building relationships on campus".
That particular investment seems to have paid off. Each year Universum, an employer-branding consultant, asks some 30,000 American students to name their ideal employer. In this year's survey, published recently, PWC came second (up from 4th in 2004), topped only by BWM. Yet the German carmaker, which knocked Microsoft off the top spot, steers clear of campuses, relying for its popularity, says Universum, on the "coolness" of its products②.
Students, it seems, are heavily influenced in their choice of ideal employer by their perception of that employer's products and services. Soaring up this year's list were Apple Computer (from 41st to 13th) and the Federal Bureau of Investment (from 138th to 10th). The success of Apple's cool iPod has had a powerful effect in the firm's ability to recruit top undergraduates. Likewise, the positive portrayal of the FBI in some recent films and TV shows has allegedly helped with recruitment.
The accounting firms say that the fall of Enron and Arthur Andersen has done their recruitment no harm: instead, they claim, it has made students realize that accounting is not mere number crunching, but also involves moral judgments. The "Big Four" accounting firms are all among this year's top 15 ideal employers.
Undergraduates now do much of their research into future employments online. There seems to be a close correlation between their choice of ideal employer and their choice of most impressive website—where PWC, Microsoft and Ernst & Young win gold, silver and bronze respectively.
Even so, some famous firms think they still appreciate the personal touch, and are sending their most senior executives to campuses to meet students and to give speeches. "The top attracts top," says, Claudia Tattanelli, boss of Universum in America. Jeffrey Immelt, GE's chief executive, is a keen on-campus speaker .and has visited six leading universities in the past year. In the process, he may have shaken hands with one of his successors.
What can we learn from the first paragraph？
The newly-emerging company is determined to take part in the international ______ for that
In this part of the country, the evergreens rarely experience any ______ to growth through
The distinguished professor was invited to preside ______ the conference on behalf of the
微信支付 
支付宝支付