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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Gilroy say Afrocentrism is really?
(a) Ethnicity protecting its flanks.
(b) Internationalism.
(c) Proletarianism.
(d) Americocentrism.

2. Why has the analysis of Wright's work been impoverished according to Gilroy?
(a) Because he was pigeon-holed as a sexist.
(b) Because he has been misinterpreted.
(c) Because he moved away from the U.S.
(d) Because Wright was so ambivalent in his writing.

3. What idea does Gilroy see at work in DuBois' novel Dark Princess?
(a) Miscegenation.
(b) Inbreeding.
(c) Racial heterogeneity.
(d) Exogamy.

4. What does Gilroy say was a formative influence on black culture in Richard Wright's works?
(a) Self-reliance.
(b) Common privation.
(c) Individualism.
(d) Capitalism.

5. What feeling did DuBois see in the culture of diaspora blacks?
(a) Ambivalence about modernity.
(b) Resentment of progress.
(c) Anger for being taken into exile.
(d) Longing for the apocalypse.

6. What is the last period of black history, according to DuBois, in The Souls of Black Folk?
(a) Black self-reliance.
(b) Black music.
(c) Political autonomy.
(d) Returning to Africa.

7. How was Richard Wright received, according to Gilroy?
(a) As an artist.
(b) As an exception to his race.
(c) As a representative of his race.
(d) As a scion of a new race.

8. What is the role of slavery in the black idea of tradition?
(a) A chance to participate in the ongoing developments of modernism.
(b) A trial and opportunity for redemption through suffering.
(c) The founding event.
(d) A footnote to the development of sub-Saharan civilizations.

9. What horrified Richard Wright in Gilroy's account?
(a) Whites identifying with his black characters.
(b) The history of blacks in America.
(c) Europeans taking his books as true indications of life in America.
(d) Blacks criticizing his characters.

10. What distinction does Gilroy say Richard Wright was the first black writer to achieve?
(a) Bestseller status in the U.S.
(b) The Pullitzer Price for fiction.
(c) Bestseller status in Europe.
(d) Recognition by the international literary establishment.

11. How does Gilroy say blacks are different from Jews?
(a) Blacks were never systematically exterminated.
(b) Blacks do not believe that they have a covenant with their god.
(c) Blacks do not have a homeland to return to.
(d) Blacks do not believe they all come from a common ancestor.

12. What is the effect of turning toward tradition in Gilroy's account?
(a) Slavery gets repossessed.
(b) Slavery becomes a cultural asset.
(c) Slavery becomes more remote.
(d) Slavery comes into focus as a foundational catastrophe.

13. How did Richard Wright want to present blacks in his books?
(a) As something other than victims.
(b) As collaborators in their own oppression.
(c) As agents in the oppression of others.
(d) As victims of white power.

14. Why should blacks openly recognize the debt of their cultural language?
(a) To accept their place in Western civilization.
(b) To make peaceful relations with Jews.
(c) To build bridges to white culture.
(d) To recognize that their culture is part of a larger cultural development.

15. What does Gilroy say Richard Wright was ambivalent to?
(a) A closed racial community.
(b) Harmonious coexistence with dominant culture.
(c) Reconciliation with white culture.
(d) Assimilation.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Gilroy characterize the third mode of double consciousness?

2. What phrase did Richard Wright use for the Negro?

3. The first mode of double consciousness is particular to whom?

4. When did DuBois experience himself as a Negro for the first time?

5. What does tradition signify in black culture according to Gilroy?

(see the answer keys)

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