Reading Comprehension

PT142 · S3 · P4 · Q26 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.

26.

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

  1. whether or not one can

    Not Uncertain

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

    47% picked this

  2. whether or not historians preceding

    Out of Scope: historians' assumptions

    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.

    2% picked this

  3. whether or not there was

    Not Uncertain

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

    5% picked this

  4. Correct

    the extent to which the

    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.

    45% picked this

  5. the nature of the relationship

    Not Uncertain

    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.

    1% picked this

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