African American Transnationalism

Answer choices

1. A

   Too Strong1% picked this

   Historians are now recognizing that the major challenge faced by African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

   Too Strong: the major challenge Narrow Focus: citizenship Citizenship was just brought up as one of the several reasons that black historians were engaged in a noteworthy type of project. The author's main point was not that "citizenship was the main problem"; her main point was, "black historians were engaged in writing a very different type of nationalist history than their mainstream counterparts".

   1%
2. B

   Too Strong: primarily Narrow Focus: emigrationist1% picked this

   Early African American historians who practiced a transnational approach to history were primarily interested in

   Just like choice (A), this is placing way too much emphasis on one of the things mentioned in the 2nd paragraph. Our Main Point sentences were found in the 1st and 4th paragraph. Within that 2nd paragraph, we know that there was an internal struggle among black historians (and black Americans) about whether they should fight for full-fledged American citizenship or seek their identity / nationhood elsewhere. There's no way to quantity whether there was more of one or the other, so we can't say that either was the primary interest.

   1%
3. C

   Wrong Focus12% picked this

   U.S. historiography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was characterized by a conflict between African American historians who viewed history from a

   Wrong Focus: black historians vs. mainstream Too Strong: characterized by conflict The author definitely helps us see several layers of contrast between African American historians and mainstream historians. But nowhere in the passage does it sound like history at that time was characterized by these two groups butting heads. It's also somewhat missing the main point to say that the black historians viewed history from a transnational perspective, since the author's main evaluation in the last paragraph is that this "transnational" perspective was actually still kind of "national", in a diasporic sense.

   12%
4. D

   Correct84% picked this

   The transnational perspective of early African American historians countered mainstream nationalist historiography, but it was arguably nationalist itself to the extent that it

   Why this is right

   The first half of this answer sounds like our Most Valuable Sentence #1, the first sentence of the passage. The second half sounds like the Author's evaluation in the final paragraph, telegraphed by the "but / yet / however" pivot.

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

   84%
5. E

   Out of Scope: mainstream changing1% picked this

   Mainstream U.S. historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could no longer justify their nationalist approach to history once they were confronted

   The passage never talks about mainstream historians reacting to the transnational perspective of black historians and changing as a result. The idea doesn't even ring true from a common sense perspective, since the mainstream historians were concerned with writing the narrative of the great American empire, while the black historians were concerned with writing the narrative of the great African people who were stolen from their homeland and are now spread around the world.

   1%