Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Hard

PT142 S3 P4 Q26 Explanation

The “Mexican American Generation”

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

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Passage

This passage is adapted from a review of book.

In a recent study, Mario García argues that in the United States between 1930 and 1960 the group of political activists he calls the “Mexican American Generation” was more radical and politically diverse than earlier historians have recognized. Through analysis of the work of some of the era’s most important scholars, García Chicanos of the 1960s and 1970s. His study, however, suffers from two flaws.

First, García’s analysis of the evidence he provides to demonstrate the Mexican American Generation’s political diversity is not entirely consistent. Indeed, he undermines his primary thesis by emphasizing an underlying consensus among various groups that tends to conceal the full significance of their differences. Groups such as the League of United Latin political history since 1930 has been characterized not by consensus but by intense and lively debate.

Second, García may be exaggerating the degree to which the views of these activists were representative of the ethnic Mexican population residing in the United States during this period. Noting that by 1930 the proportion of the Mexican American population that had been born in the United States had significantly increased, García in the United States necessarily resulted in an increase in the ethnic Mexican population’s political activism.

What this question is testing

Locate Detail

Your task

Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.

Common trap

Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.

Winning move

Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
26.

The author of the passage expresses uncertainty with regard to which one

Answer choices

  1. Not Uncertain46% picked this

    whether or not one can assume that the increase in the number of Mexican Americans born in the United States led to an

    In the last sentence the author definitively says we cannot assume this.

  2. Out of Scope: historians' assumptions3% picked this

    whether or not historians preceding Garcia were correct in their assumptions about Mexican Americans who were politically active

    The historians preceding Garcia are obliquely mentioned in the first paragraph, but we aren't told any of their assumptions about Mexican Americans' political activity in the 30s-60s.

  3. Not Uncertain6% picked this

    whether or not there was general consensus among Mexican American political activists between

    The last sentence of the second paragraph establishes that this group of activists were characterized "not by consensus, but by intense and lively debate".

  4. Correct44% picked this

    the extent to which the views of Mexican American activists were shared by the ethnic Mexican population

    Why this is right

    This lines up nicely with our Support Window. We found the best line reference for "author's uncertainty": However, it is not clear how far this outlook extended And this answer just says what that sentence says -- the author isn't sure whether the political activism exhibited by the activists was shared by regular old Mexican Americans or if it was an anomaly.

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

  5. Not Uncertain1% picked this

    the nature of the relationship between the League of United Latin American Citizens and the

    This is nowhere near our Support Window towards the end of the 3rd paragraph. This comes from the middle of the 2nd paragraph. The author doesn't seem uncertain about the relationship. She says the former group was often "diametrically opposed to" the latter group.

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