When Myrdal's work was published, Black Americans earned less, were more likely to be unemployed, and led shorter and unhealthier lives.

默达尔的著作发表后，美国黑人收入更少，失业的可能性更大，寿命更短，生活也更不健康。

But Myrdal and his army of social scientists seemed, for at least a time, to cut through America's fairy-tale understanding of itself.

但默达尔和他的社会科学家大军似乎至少在一段时间内打破了美国对自身童话般的理解。

In his study, Myrdal found ample proof of Black ingenuity, creativity and grit, producing lives of multidimensional joy and peril. All that's still there.

在他的研究中，默达尔发现了充分的证据，证明黑人的聪明才智、创造力和勇气，创造了多维度的快乐和危险的生活。所有这些都还在。

But as the optimistic Myrdal saw in 1944, yet had a hard time putting bluntly, America is not about the business of doing things much differently.

但正如乐观的默达尔在1944年所看到的那样(虽然他很难直言不讳)，美国在做事方面并没有太大的不同。

" Virtually the whole range" of public amenities, from hospitals to libraries, were " much poorer for Negroes than they are for whites, " Myrdal wrote.

默达尔写道，“几乎所有”公共设施，从医院到图书馆，“对黑人来说要比白人差得多”。

Myrdal died in 1987. He did not live to see the new and creative ways that Americans have developed of telling lies. And he was not immune to the same maladies.

默达尔于1987年去世。他没有活着看到美国人发展出来的新的、有创造性的说谎方式。他也不能对同样的疾病免疫。

Myrdal was far from the first to try to illuminate the effects of ongoing institutional racism, the frequent and extreme way it pushed the U.S. away from its core ideals and constitutional promises.

默达尔并不是第一个试图阐明现行制度性种族主义影响的人，这种现象频繁而极端地将美国推向背离其核心理想和宪法承诺的境地。

Myrdal did much more. Almost seven years later, he produced a twovolume study he dubbed An American Dilemma, exploring, in statistical detail, the evidence of the great American lie-the gap between the nation's ideals and its racial reality.

米达尔做得更多。将近七年后，他出版了一份名为《美国困境》的两卷研究，从统计的细节中探索了伟大的美国人的谎言——国家理想和种族现实之间的差距。