Word: powerlessly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...consistently preached self-help. Now he warns, "Our failure to become introspective and responsible takes away our moral authority." Nelson Mandela worked the same vein last week: "All students must return to school and learn." The lesson of Glory, proceeding out of black history, is that blacks are not powerless in the face of racism or poverty. The battles fought and won by earlier generations of blacks were immensely more difficult than those that face most blacks today...
Black leaders take exactly the opposite view. At least some members of the A.N.C. have seen during the past six months how powerless citizens have seized power all over Eastern Europe. With Mandela free, a leader not only in spirit but also in person, black South Africans could finally muster the unity to do the same. Years of protest and suppression have politicized them as never before and given rise to powerful antiapartheid coalitions. Skillfully led and adequately financed, such organizations could fill South Africa's streets and apply more pressure than the government has yet encountered. The notion that...
...white flexibility. Moderate Afrikaners find the idea of black rule fearsome primarily because they are convinced it would lead to economic chaos. De Klerk's real mandate from his Afrikaner supporters is to find a way to give power to the black man without rendering the white man powerless...
...conclude that someone is plotting their extinction. But, as Harvard political scientist Martin Kilson points out, it is "a long way from believing some whites would like to - exterminate blacks to believing they are capable of doing so." Conspiracy theories insult blacks by suggesting that they are hapless victims powerless to resist a racist scheme. They imply that the African Americans who have become mayors and police chiefs in dozens of cities are either willing participants in the plot or inept dupes...
Assessing Thatcher, Fraser compares her to Queen Elizabeth I. "She's like a 16th century queen -- not a modern one, powerless, gracious, noncontentious. Her handling of her femininity is astonishingly similar to that of Elizabeth I. She says, 'I'm feminine, don't you forget it. I'll dress as a woman, but at the same time, I'm as good as a man.' She's like Elizabeth: 'I've got the heart and stomach of a king!' She's old style, with courtiers and endless speculation about her favorites. Look at that photograph of her with her Cabinet...