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nearly, almost, practically, just about
“According to a textbook for children published in 1987 by the Bronx County Historical Society,virtually all of what is now described as the South Bronx, was purchased between 1670 and 1692 by a man named Richard Morris with profits made from sugar production on a slave plantation owned by his family in Barbados”(27). |
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make consistent with one another, make or show to be compatible
“The textbooks, written primarily for the use of teachers in the school of the South Bronx, attempts to reconcile a sense of reverence for one of the Founding Fathers with an honest recognition of the contradictions in his life and background”(27). |
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justifying, vindicating, face-saving, extenuating
“While noting, for example, that his family did not merely use slaves on their lands, but also traded slaves and used their labor as the workforce in an iron foundry that they operated in New Jersey, the author tries to place these enterprises in a mitigating context”(27). |
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besieged, blockaded, surrounded, hard-pressed, with one's back to the wall
“Morris High School is, after all, one of the most beleaguered, segregated, and decrepit schools in the United States”(29). |
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isolated, hidden away
“It isn’t enough that these people are sequestered”(31). |
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the quality of being unanimous, the quality of being fully in agreement
“Feelings of distrust for the police are not unusual among young people nowadays, not only in the cities; but the unanimity in the distrust these children voice is somewhat startling”(33). |
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rudely brief
“ ‘When you asked him about the reason that he feels ‘locked down,’ his answer to you was rather curt’”(35). |
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having no comforts or luxuries, extremely plain and simple in style and appearance
“A strangely austere old man with long grey hair, sits on a milk carton, by the curb, one of his arms draped over a crutch, a hot and tired look within his eyes”(37). |
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sluggishly, apathetically, as if you don't care, or can't be bothered
“Somewhat lethargically now, as if she may be just a bit sedated, she says, ‘All of us in my family had their Bibles,’”(45). |
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bold and without shame
“’Drug dealers down there are so brazen that they ripped the metal front right off the mailbox’”(51). |
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