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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 3: "Part Three: The Eight Pillars of Caste".

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When legislation was finally adopted to limit the workday of enslaved persons, how long did their workday become?
(a) 12 hours.
(b) 18 hours.
(c) 14-15 hours.
(d) 9-10 hours.

2. According to Wilkerson in "The Second Pillar: Heritability," what distinguishes "caste" from "class"?
(a) Caste is permanent and inescapable.
(b) Caste is not related to economics.
(c) Class is not a status marker.
(d) Class cannot be inherited.

3. According to Wilkerson in "The Second Pillar: Heritability," what happened to Forest Whitaker at a Manhattan Deli?
(a) He was assaulted by a police officer.
(b) A customer assumed that he was a busboy.
(c) An employee referred to him using a racial epithet.
(d) He was accused of shoplifting.

4. In "A Long-Running Play and the Emergence of Caste in America," where does Wilkerson say that the American caste system was born?
(a) In England.
(b) In the Virginia colony.
(c) In South Carolina.
(d) In the American South.

5. 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 idea that the house has a story to tell is an example of what literary technique?
(a) Personification.
(b) Metonymy.
(c) Litotes.
(d) Apostrophe.

Short Answer Questions

1. What technique does Wilkerson use for the first time in the beginning of "An Old House and an Infrared Light"?

2. What social trend does Wilkerson link to the 2016 election?

3. 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)?

4. In "Chapter Five: 'The Container We Have Built for You,'" what does Harold Hale do when people knock down his mailbox?

5. According to Wilkerson, what serves as a signal of rank within the American caste system?

(see the answer key)

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