Word: seem
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Although the exact happenings of the night of February 19 are unclear to most of us, I will assume for the purposes of this letter that Mr. Buckley's account covers the extent of them. By this account, the events of that night seem to fall far short of the unofficially maintained standards of what constitutes sexual harassment at Harvard...
...blights on his happy childhood seem small, but, Updike argues, they inexorably determined the life he would lead. As a boy, he developed psoriasis and a sporadic stammer; he could savor reality's entrancing parade but never feel comfortable joining it himself. The recurring rashes on his skin kept him apart, drove his attention inward: "You are forced to the mirror, again and again; psoriasis compels narcissism, if we can suppose a Narcissus who did not like what he saw." One of the hallmarks of his fiction became elaborate celebrations of the status quo. Updike thinks he knows...
Rather than welcoming blacks into the mainstream, some whites feel threatened by their arrival. They seem to believe that the good life -- the desirable neighborhood, the right school, the best country club -- is for whites only. Blacks in token numbers may be tolerated. But when their numbers exceed a so-called tipping point, many whites go on the defensive. A generation ago, the color bar was rigid and well defined: no blacks allowed. Now it has become a shifting barrier that can suddenly materialize, curtly reminding blacks that no matter how successful they may be, they remain in some ways...
Such affronts may seem insignificant to whites, but they are reshaping the racial agenda for the next decade and beyond. The problems of the urban black underclass -- unemployment, drugs, teenage pregnancy, hopeless schools -- are more urgent than ever. But for the black middle class, there are new preoccupations. Not just job-creation programs, but job promotions. Not just high school diplomas, but college tuition. Not just picket lines, but picket fences. An agenda, in short, for a full partnership in the American Dream...
Superficially, middle-class blacks already seem to be living that dream. Leon and Cora Brooks have spent more than a decade at IBM, where he is a dealer account manager and she is a senior personnel specialist. They have a comfortable home in the affluent and mostly black Los Angeles neighborhood of Baldwin Hills; they have a Mercedes in the garage and a daughter at California State University at Northridge. Leon Brooks jokes, "We're a typical white family that happens to be black...