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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 5: "Part Five: The Consequences of Caste".

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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 passing a law that said Blacks could only be paid in goods, not money.
(b) By making it illegal for Blacks to purchase property.
(c) By making it illegal for them to sell or trade goods.
(d) By taxing inheritances in Black families at close to 100%.

2. 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 South Carolina.
(b) In England.
(c) In the American South.
(d) In the Virginia colony.

3. What was decided at the conference depicted in the opening of "The Nazis and the Acceleration of Caste"?
(a) The Nuremberg Laws.
(b) The Lebensraum program.
(c) Forced sterilization of Jews.
(d) The plan to exterminate German Jews.

4. According to "Pillar Number Four: Purity versus Pollution," what did the United States use to "curate" its population (123)?
(a) Immigration policy.
(b) Jim Crow laws.
(c) Anti-miscegenation laws.
(d) Laws defining status based on degree of African blood.

5. On page 287 of "Chapter Twenty-Two: The Stockholm Syndrome and the Survival of the Subordinate Class," what does Wilkerson blame on "the latitude granted these white saviors...[and] the collective desire to solve tribal wounds with superficial gestures of grace from the wounded"?
(a) The 2015 Charleston church massacre.
(b) The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
(c) The light sentence given to the white officer who shot a man who was just watching TV in his own apartment.
(d) The failure of society to see the truth of Devonte Hart's situation.

Short Answer Questions

1. 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?

2. On page 12, Wilkerson says that some contagions can only be managed with "vigilance." How is she proposing they should be managed?

3. In the beginning of "Chapter Six: The Measure of Humanity," what physical characteristic is the basis for Wilkerson's imaginary caste system?

4. In "Chapter Six: The Measure of Humanity," Wilkerson says that actions that reinforce the caste system are "autonomic." What is the best meaning of this word in this context?

5. On page 59 of "Chapter Five: 'The Container We Have Built for You,'" when Harold Hale's daughter is about to return to school after a visit with a friend's family, what is the grandmother's response?

(see the answer key)

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