Reading Comprehension

PT142 · S3 · P4 · Q25 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.

25.

It can be inferred that the author of the passage believes which one of the following about the Mexican American political activists of the 1930s and 1940s?

Their common goal of liberal
Unsupported Causal Relationship
This answer sort of puts the opposite of the 3rd idea into a causal connection with the 1st idea - less militant than later activists - foreshadowed / laid groundwork for later reforms - fought a lot with each other - may have been way more committed to achieving full civil rights than were there non-activist contemporaries. We know the author thinks the activists from the 30s/40s were less militant, but she never says it's because of the activists in the 30s/40s (unlike in the 60s/70s?) had the common goal of liberal reform.
10% picked this
Correct
Their common goal of liberal
Why this is right
This answer is expressing the author's main point in the 2nd paragraph, the 3rd of our possible answer ideas: - less militant than later activists - foreshadowed / laid groundwork for later reforms - fought a lot with each other - may have been way more committed to achieving full civil rights than were there non-activist contemporaries. The author takes issue with Garcia for "acknowledging these [stark] differences between different activist groups but dismissing them as insignificant, given that the goals of all the groups centered on liberal reform." The following sentence starts with a Pivot, where the author pushes back. "But ... [even though they had a common goal of liberal reform] one need only note the fierce controversies that occurred during X to recognize that Mexican American history since 1930 has been characterized by intense and lively debate".
Skill tested: Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
61% picked this
Their common goal of liberal
Opposite / Wrong P.O.V.
This answer is basically the opposite of (B). This answer would better reflect Garcia's position, that even though these activists had their differences, they were united under the common goal of liberal reform. This answer seems to go against our 3rd idea. - less militant than later activists - foreshadowed / laid groundwork for later reforms - fought a lot with each other - may have been way more committed to achieving full civil rights than were there non-activist contemporaries.
8% picked this
They were more or less
Too Strong: evenly divided
Nothing in the passage speaks to a quantified comparison between the activists that favor assimilation and those that favor cultural maintenance. The author seemed more to be suggesting that "although the activists were more in favor of assimilation, the rest of the Mexican American population was more into favoring cultural maintenance."
11% picked this
They did not succeed in
Unsupported Causal Relationship
This answer sort of puts the 2nd idea into a causal connection with the 3rd idea. - less militant than later activists - foreshadowed / laid groundwork for later reforms - fought a lot with each other - may have been way more committed to achieving full civil rights than were there non-activist contemporaries. We know that the activists had disparate political views. We never hear specifically about whether they fully achieved their goals. We can probably assume that they didn't fully achieve their goals if they anticipated reforms that came later. Plus, who in life ever really fully achieves their goals? That seems like a very safe expression to sign off on. However, there's just no textual support for any causal connection between "disparate views" and "failing to fully achieve goals".
9% picked this

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