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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Wilkerson in In "Chapter Six: The Measure of Humanity," what do social scientists say combines with racial bias to produce racism?
(a) Personal intention.
(b) Overt hatred.
(c) Systemic power.
(d) Extremism.

2. In "Through the Fog of Delhi to the Parallels in India and America," what is one of the main differences that Wilkerson notes between caste in America and caste in India?
(a) Blacks in America are not permanently confined to the lowest caste.
(b) There is no attempt being made in modern India to improve the situation of the lowest caste.
(c) The lowest caste in India was never enslaved.
(d) The American system is for the most part a binary one.

3. In "Chapter Five: 'The Container We Have Built for You,'" what unusual name does Harold Hale give his daughter?
(a) White.
(b) Lady.
(c) Miss.
(d) Daughter.

4. In "Pillar Number Five: Occupational Hierarchy: The Jatis and the Mudsill," how does Wilkerson say the state of South Carolina tried to keep Blacks out of all jobs other than domestic service and farming?
(a) By refusing them access to schooling.
(b) By assessing them an exorbitant fee for a license to do other work.
(c) Through terror and social pressure.
(d) By making it illegal for Blacks to work outside of farming and domestic service.

5. In "Chapter Five: 'The Container We Have Built for You,'" what does Harold Hale do when people knock down his mailbox?
(a) Resets it, in concrete.
(b) Complains to the police.
(c) Forms a neighborhood watch committee.
(d) Moves to a safer neighborhood.

Short Answer Questions

1. To what Supreme Court case does Wilkerson allude in her "Pillar Number Four: Purity versus Pollution" story about the shoemaker who sued for the right to ride in the white car of the train?

2. In Wilkerson's anecdote about the house inspector, how does he "see past the plaster" (17)?

3. Where does the word "caste" come from?

4. In "Chapter Six: The Measure of Humanity," what does Wilkerson say human-genome testing has revealed about race?

5. In "A Long-Running Play and the Emergence of Caste in America," what does the Nigerian playwright tell Wilkerson about Blacks in Africa?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the rhetorical purpose of including the anecdote about Willie James Howard in "Pillar Number Three: Endogamy and the Control of Marriage and Mating"?

2. What explanation does Wilkerson give of the justification for slavery in Christian scriptures in "Pillar Number One: Divine Will and the Laws of Nature"?

3. Explain the relationship between Hammond's "Mudsill" speech and the economic uses of caste that Wilkerson describes in "Pillar Number Five: Occupational Hierarchy: The Jatis and the Mudsill."

4. How does Wilkerson use the colonial census as support for her argument about caste in colonial America?

5. According to Wilkerson, what relationship exists between immigration or transportation to America and "becoming" white or Black?

6. For what reason does Wilkerson say that race is a social concept, not a biological one?

7. Explain the analogy that Wilkerson makes between caste and a play.

8. According to "A Long-Running Play and the Emergence of Caste in America," what was the original justification for lifetime enslavement, and how did that justification need to change as circumstances changed?

9. According to Wilkerson in "An Old House and an Infrared Light," how are caste systems justified, and what is their real purpose?

10. In "Pillar Number Eight: Inherent Superiority versus Inherent Inferiority," what does Wilkerson say underlies each of the first seven "pillars" she has already described?

(see the answer keys)

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