ohmyrichard
Member
- Joined
- May 24, 2008
- Member Type
- English Teacher
- Native Language
- Chinese
- Home Country
- China
- Current Location
- China
Dear teachers,
The day before, I read a three-paragraph post on Reddit, which goes as follows:
(In order to let you better understand how my question arose, I got the whole post typed below and have the sentence of "double negative" underlined, which is what my question is about.)
Regarding their rebel flag on the Mississippi flag...I just learned they added it in the 50s to send the specific message they are a segregated state (the sentence of "I just learned they ...are a segregated state" was marked as something crossed out in the original post)It was flown in pro-segregation rallies along with the "rebel flag". So shameless how racist people were back then. It blows my mind how many people don't believe these types of actions by the government couldn't have resulted in the wealth disparity we see between blacks and whites in America.
Half of Americans until the late 80s didn't believe in interracial dating, you're telling me this didn't affect job, education, and legal system treatment of blacks?
It's almost sickening how little we do to identify and fix these problems.
My question is, what does the underlined sentence actually mean? Is it that here in this sentence the second negative acts only as an intensifier to the first negative and they do not resolve to a positive?(I am borrowing the way of explaining the issue from wikipedia) I mean the underlined sentence means "I am surprised that many people don't believe these types of actions by the government could have resulted in the wealth disparity we see between blacks and whites in America" or "I am surprised that many people believe these types of actions by the government couldn't have resulted in the wealth disparity we see between blacks and whites in America", does it?
Looking forward to your replies. Thanks.
Richard
The day before, I read a three-paragraph post on Reddit, which goes as follows:
(In order to let you better understand how my question arose, I got the whole post typed below and have the sentence of "double negative" underlined, which is what my question is about.)
Regarding their rebel flag on the Mississippi flag...I just learned they added it in the 50s to send the specific message they are a segregated state (the sentence of "I just learned they ...are a segregated state" was marked as something crossed out in the original post)It was flown in pro-segregation rallies along with the "rebel flag". So shameless how racist people were back then. It blows my mind how many people don't believe these types of actions by the government couldn't have resulted in the wealth disparity we see between blacks and whites in America.
Half of Americans until the late 80s didn't believe in interracial dating, you're telling me this didn't affect job, education, and legal system treatment of blacks?
It's almost sickening how little we do to identify and fix these problems.
My question is, what does the underlined sentence actually mean? Is it that here in this sentence the second negative acts only as an intensifier to the first negative and they do not resolve to a positive?(I am borrowing the way of explaining the issue from wikipedia) I mean the underlined sentence means "I am surprised that many people don't believe these types of actions by the government could have resulted in the wealth disparity we see between blacks and whites in America" or "I am surprised that many people believe these types of actions by the government couldn't have resulted in the wealth disparity we see between blacks and whites in America", does it?
Looking forward to your replies. Thanks.
Richard