Reading Comprehension

PT142 · S3 · P4 · Q23 The “Mexican American Generation”

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This passage is adapted from a review of a 1991 book.

Topic

Garcia's study

Framework

Challenge a Position

Main Point

Garcia's study is cool but suffers from two flaws: it semi-contradicts itself when arguing about the diversity of views among the Mexican American activists, and it possibly assumes that the political consciousness of the activists was more widespread among the rest of the Mexican American ethnic population than it really was.

Summary

P1 - Intro of Garcia's book, a compliment, a critiquing thesis

The author establishes what the thesis of Garcia's book is and drops a little complimentary juice by saying that Garcia does provide "persuasive evidence "that the Mexican American activists in the 30s-60s were important harbingers of more famous activism that occurred in the 60s.

But we get our Purpose Pivot (but, yet, however, recently) in the final sentence. We can tell this sentence is the author's thesis because it says that Garcia's study suffers from two flaws, and then we can see that paragraphs 2 and 3 are just unpacking that thesis.

P2 - First flaw ... support for 'diversity' undermines itself

The author is basically just saying that Garcia did himself a disservice by acknowledging how much common ground there was among the Mexican American activists of the 30s to 60s, given that Garcia's main point was to convey the diversity of thought within this group (and given that there definitely WAS a lot of diversity within this group).

This is a weird complaint, because it's not the author disagreeing with the content of Garcia's thesis; she's just complaining that he did a poor job in executing his supporting evidence, since he emphasized togetherness, at the expense of better communicating diversity.

P3 - Second flaw - author thinks activists were an unrepresentative sample

Here, the author is basically saying that Garcia may go too far in thinking that the political engagement of the activists somehow reflected broader trends among the Mexican American population, when the author feels like most of the regular Mexican Americans were still pretty culturally conservative and shut-off from mainstream American politics.

23.

It can be inferred from the passage that García would most probably agree with which one of the following statements about the Mexican American political activists of the 1930s and 1940s?

  1. Correct

    Some of their concerns were

    Why this is right

    This maps pretty closely to our Support Sentence. And the language, "Some", is deliciously soft. We were told that these activists anticipated many of the reforms proposed by the more militant Chicanos of the 1960s and 1970s. That means that the reforms they were proposing were similar (harbingers / foreshadowing / forerunners) of the stuff being proposed in the 60s/70s. Hence, they had some similar concerns with activists from the 60s/70s.

    Skill tested: Non-Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    80% picked this

  2. They were more politically diverse

    Unsupported Comparison: diverse

    In the 2nd paragraph, the author stresses the political (and combative) diversity of thought within the Mexican American activist movement. Garcia acknowledges these differences but dismisses them as insignificant. So Garcia is actually downplaying the political differences. Most importantly, neither the author nor Garcia compare the political diversity of the 30s/40s to that of the 60s/70s.

    9% picked this

  3. They were as militant as

    Contradicted

    Our support sentence towards the end of the 1st paragraph says that the activists of the 60s/70s were more militant.

    4% picked this

  4. Most of them advocated bilingual

    Too Strong: most

    This language about bilingual education / equal rights isn't anywhere near our Support Window. And answers that use "most" or its synonyms are famously dangerous. We can only pick these if we find support text that talks about "most activists in the 30s/40s" or that generalizes about them in a way that we can assume thereby applies to most. The concepts of "bilingual education and equal rights for resident aliens" come from the 2nd paragraph. It should unnerve us that this answer is copying that much text verbatim from the passage (that's the hallmark of trap answers, not correct ones). We are told that "the Congress of Spanish-Speaking people" advocates these two things. We're never told that most Mexican American activists in the 30s/40s do.

    3% picked this

  5. Most of them were more

    Too Strong: most Contradicted, if anything

    We're told that the activists of the 60s/70s are the more militant ones, so they would be the ones more interested in revolution. And Garcia notes in the 2nd paragraph, the goals of groups as disparate as these (different groups of Mexican American activists) centered on liberal reform, not revolution.

    4% picked this

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