Word: za
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When it comes to achieving in school, Za'kettha Blaylock knows that even dreaming of success can mean living a nightmare. She would, above all things, like to work hard, go to college and become a doctor. But to many other black 14-year-old girls in her corner of Oakland, these ideas are anathema. The telephone rings in her family's modest apartment, and the anonymous voice murmurs daggers. "We're gonna kill you," the caller says. Za'kettha knows the threat comes from a gang of black girls, one that specializes not in drugs or street fights...
...most surprising -- and discouraging -- may be those erected by their own peers. Many children must also cope with broken families, inadequate schools and crumbling communities that do not value academic achievement as essential to survival and prosperity. But the ridicule of peers cuts most deeply of all. Students like Za'kettha find themselves reviled as "uppity," as trying to "act white," because many teenagers have come to equate black identity with alienation and indifference. "I used to go home and cry," says Tachelle Ross, 18, a senior at Oberlin High in Ohio. "They called me white. I don't know...
...Banks' house, remove all theirfurniture, install a tulip border...you get theidea. If Annie is going to have a lohhhvlahwahhhdink, George is going to have to cough up the$1200 for Franck's kek, even though, as George soinsensitively points out, a kek is just flour andwater. "Wilcome to za Nahntees, Moostah Bahnks!"Franck cackles with tyrannical glee. So Nina tellsGeorge to stop being such a spoilsport. So Georgerelents. So Annie smiles with relief. Good boy,George...
...tyrant's appeal transfigured a shell-shocked country. Suddenly a hopeless cause became the Great Patriotic War. Even those who hated Stalin -- like the novelist Victor Nekrasov -- remember rushing into combat crying "Za rodinu, za Stalina!" (For the motherland, for Stalin!). The reanimated Russians could also count on a perennial ally: Father Winter...
Mobuto Sese Seko Nkuku wa za Banga (just plain Mobuto to his friends)--a man who tortures students for complaining about inflation, a man who throws loyal government ministers in prison for sneezing improperly, a man who likes to watch a good hanging now and then--will speak Thursday at Harvard's very own Institute of Politics on the subject, "Peace and Progress in Southern Africa...