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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 4: "Part Four: The Tentacles of Caste".

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In "Chapter Fourteen: The Intrusion of Caste in Everyday Life," why does Wilkerson include the story of Corey Lewis and the children he was supervising?
(a) It is an example of white policing of Blacks doing ordinary everyday things.
(b) It is an example of whites assuming they have the right to supervise Black children.
(c) It is an example of police violence toward Black Americans.
(d) It is an example of Black parents trying to protect their sons from the dangers of being Black in America.

2. In "Chapter Fourteen: The Intrusion of Caste in Everyday Life," what does Wilkerson use Tamir Rice's story to illustrate?
(a) Black parents have good reason for being afraid for their sons.
(b) Whites often assume that they have authority over unrelated Black children.
(c) White bystanders often assume that they know better than Black parents.
(d) Black parents are capable of raising their own children.

3. In "Pillar Number Five: Occupational Hierarchy: The Jatis and the Mudsill," how does Wilkerson say North Carolina prevented Blacks from achieving economic independence?
(a) By making it illegal for them to sell or trade goods.
(b) By taxing inheritances in Black families at close to 100%.
(c) By passing a law that said Blacks could only be paid in goods, not money.
(d) By making it illegal for Blacks to purchase property.

4. In "Chapter Six: The Measure of Humanity," where does Wilkerson say the term "Caucasian" came from?
(a) A Sanskrit word that originally referred not to race but to caste.
(b) An eighteenth century novel about a fictional people who migrated from Central Europe to Western Europe.
(c) A German professor who thought a skull from the Caucasus Mountains was especially attractive.
(d) A long-discredited theory about human origins in Western Russia.

5. In "Through the Fog of Delhi to the Parallels in India and America," what is the rhetorical purpose of including the detail of the fog that Wilkerson sees when her plane lands?
(a) Wilkerson is metaphorically challenging the reader to reason past a "fog" of propaganda.
(b) It foreshadows the difficulties Wilkerson will have in gaining cooperation during her visit.
(c) It symbolizes the difficulty of seeing the Indian social system clearly.
(d) Wilkerson personifies the fog in an analogy that demonstrates how tradition "clouds" an understanding of present realities.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to "The Trials of the Middle Castes: The Race to Get Under the White Tent," what caused the Supreme Court to rule that "White" means "Caucasian"?

2. In the page 15 sentence "An old house is its own kind of devotional, a dowager aunt with a story to be coaxed out of her," the reference to a dowager aunt is an example of what literary technique?

3. In "An American Untouchable," how does the high school principal in India refer to Martin Luther King'?

4. In "Defining Purity and the Constancy of the Bottom Rung," what does Wilkerson note is referred to as "the most segregated hour in America" (128)?

5. In "Chapter Eleven: Dominant Group Status Threat and the Precarity of the Highest Rung," what does Wilkerson argue the lowest-status Whites have been given in the place of real security and opportunity?

(see the answer key)

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