Reading Comprehension

PT142 · S3 · P4 · Q24 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.

24.

The passage suggests that García assumes which one of the following to have been true of Mexican Americans between 1930 and 1960?

  1. Increased ethnic consciousness among Mexican

    Opposite

    The author is thinking that decreased ethnic consciousness accounted for an increase in political activity, if we imagine that it's a zero sum game between acculturating to the U.S. and maintaining the ethnic culture from Mexico. Garcia thinks that these activists were a new generation of leaders, one that was more acculturated and hence more politically active than its predecessor.

    16% picked this

  2. Correct

    Increased familiarity among Mexican Americans

    Why this is right

    In the second sentence of the final paragraph, the author says that Garcia argues that a new generation of Mexican American leaders appeared. They were more acculturated. Hence, they were more politically active. Assumption? Being more acculturated made them more politically active.

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

    49% picked this

  3. The assimilation of many Mexican

    Opposite

    Being assimilated = being acculturated As we've discussed in (A) and (B), the author believes that assimilating more into US culture, absorbing the wartime rhetoric, and becoming resolved to achieve full civil rights were all motivating Mexican Americans to have more interest in political activity.

    2% picked this

  4. Many Mexican Americans were moved

    Too Strong: militancy

    The term "militant" is a strong one, meaning "radical, inflexible, maximalist, dogmatic". A militant vegan is one who won't eat of any grill that has ever been used to cook meat and who makes all the people they're eating with feel guilty about any animal products they're consuming. In this passage, militant is only used in the first paragraph, to describe the activists in the 1960s.

    7% picked this

  5. Many Mexican Americans were moved

    Opposite: patronizing rhetoric

    "Patronizing" means to look down on someone, to condescend. The passage identifies the wartime rhetoric as inclusive, as in "You're our equal! Let's all pitch in as fellow Americans of all backgrounds to stop Hitler."

    26% picked this

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