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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How did Queen Nzinga address the social insult of the Dutch ambassador?

2. Which name symbolically means "The Struggle"?

3. What is "The Mecca" that the author describes to his son?

4. According to the author, when Lincoln spoke of the "government of the people," to whom was he addressing?

5. Whom did the girl with the long dreads love?

Short Essay Questions

1. According to the author, how have American police departments been given the right to destroy black bodies without the fear of recrimination?

2. How important were books to the author as he was growing up?

3. Why did the author's son experience such extreme grief when Michael Brown's killer was set free?

4. What does the author mean when he says the school system and the streets are "two arms of the same beast"?

5. What assumptions does the author make about PG County (Prince George's County) police officers and why?

6. According to the author, why is America blind to it's racially defined shortcomings?

7. For what reasons did the author's father punish him and why?

8. What is the author's interpretation of "The Dream"?

9. Why did the author's mother encourage him to write?

10. What role did violence play in the author's childhood?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The author was not raised in a religious family, nor did he develop an interest in subscribing to a personal religion or spirituality as an adult. How might his completely academic nature conflict with the traditional religious views of the black community? How might his spiritual beliefs, or lack thereof, affect the tone of his writing? How might a traditionally religious black community react to such a tone?

Essay Topic 2

The author often refers to white people as those who "believe themselves white." He also speaks often of dissociation. How might the concept of race and dissociation be related in America today? Is race a genetic or social construct?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout history, defining oneself as Black was a matter of both appearance as well as culture. There were people who chose to define themselves as White/Caucasian as a means of improving their social status. Describe how the author defines “blackness” in current American society. How did his experiences with other people, such as the girl from California who had relatives in India, the girl with dreadlocks raised by a Jewish mother, and the Howard professor who was in an open marriage to a white woman affect his view of what it meant to be a Black person?

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This section contains 1,318 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample