African American Transnationalism

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

TopicsParagraph PurposeSociety

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Passage

In contrast to the mainstream of U.S. historiography during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, African American historians of the period, such as George Washington Williams and W. E. B. DuBois, adopted a transnational perspective. This was true for several reasons, not the least of which was the necessity of doing Americans in the United States were to be treated honestly.

First, there was the problem of citizenship. Even after the adoption in 1868 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which defined citizenship, the question of citizenship for African Americans had not been genuinely resolved. Because of this, emigrationist sentiment was a central issue in black political discourse, and both issues a point of profound pessimism and had begun to question their allegiance to the United States.

Mainstream U.S. historiography was firmly rooted in a nationalist approach during this period; the glorification of the nation and a focus on the nation-state as a historical force were dominant. The expanding spheres of influence of Europe and the United States prompted the creation of new genealogies of nations, new myths about colonial empires was a distinct aspect of nationalism in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Yet, for all their distrust of U.S. nationalism, most early black historians were themselves engaged in a sort of nation building. Deliberately or not, they contributed to the formation of a collective identity, reconstructing a glorious African past for the purposes of overturning degrading representations of blackness and establishing a firm cultural the history of a people scattered by force and circumstance, a history that began in Africa.

What this question is testing

Paragraph Purpose

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 main purpose of the second paragraph of the passage

Answer choices

Correct76% picked this
explain why early African American historians felt compelled to approach historiography in the way
Why this is right
This sounds like good reinforcement of the last line of the 1st paragraph. "Compelled" sounds strong at first, but that sentence speaks of the necessity of writing from a transnational perspective.
Skill tested: Paragraph Purpose · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
76%
Wrong Broad Point4% picked this
show that governmental actions such as constitutional amendments do not always have
The author is explicitly supporting a claim about "several reasons why black leaders had transnational approach", not a claim about "government actions, even amendments, often fail to achieve their intent".
4%
Wrong Paragraph2% picked this
support the contention that African American intellectuals in the late nineteenth century were critical
The 3rd paragraph covers information about black historians being uncomfortable with the imperial mythologies of mainstream nationalist historiographers.
2%
True, But Too Narrow16% picked this
establish that some African American political leaders in the late nineteenth century advocated emigration as an alternative to fighting for
Whenever LSAT asks about purpose, they usually write a trap answer that just lives inside the details, but doesn't answer the question about why the details are being served up in the first place. The framing idea for the 2nd paragraph was the last sentence of the 1st paragraph, which mentions nothing about emigration. The emigrationist sentiment does not ever become a primary theme of the passage; it is always part of the underlying subsidiary factors that contributed to the noteworthy "transnational" (or diasporic nationalist) approach of the black historians.
16%
Wrong Broad Point2% picked this
argue that the definition of citizenship contained in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
The author is never making a case against the 14th Amendment. The author begins the 2nd paragraph with the first reason why black historians were thinking transnationally. That reason is a result of the muddled citizenship status following the ratification of the 14th amendment, but the author's purpose in bringing up the 14th isn't to critique its definition but rather to provide context that even though a citizenship amendment existed, American blacks did not feel secure in their status as American citizens.
2%

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