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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. What does Rankine quote comedian Chris Rock as saying in Part IV?
(a) No white man in the audience would change places with him, and he is rich.
(b) Black people's humor comes from much tragedy.
(c) White people should walk in his shoes for one day.
(d) Black people are survivors and white people could learn from that.

2. What does Rankine write that she is trying to understand in the very beginning of Part III?
(a) Why telling a white male he has benefitted from white male privilege feels abusive to him.
(b) Why so many people declined to be interviewed for her book.
(c) Why saying someone is racist seems offensive to that person.
(d) Why working as a researcher pays so little.

3. What ubiquitous coffee shop chain experienced a scandal for the racial bias an employee exhibited towards customers there in 2018?
(a) Starbucks.
(b) Xando.
(c) McDonald's.
(d) Caribou.

4. What does Rankine say to her white friend at the end of the play they see together in Part III?
(a) I didn't know you had this much hate in your heart.
(b) I didn't know you didn't like me.
(c) I didn't know you were Black.
(d) I didn't know you were racist.

5. What television series starring Reese Witherspoon does Rankine reference in the text in Part III?
(a) Homecoming.
(b) Little Fires Everywhere.
(c) Big Little Lies.
(d) Wysteria Lane.

Short Answer Questions

1. What rhetorical question does Rankine ask following the 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings about the differences in how Americans treat young Black men and young white men?

2. What does Rankine's white friend do to try to explain her actions at the play to Rankine after the fact?

3. Which U.S. senator once said, "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be in the front row"?

4. What was one argument the NYPD Union lawyers put forth in the death of Eric Garner at police hands, according to Rankine?

5. Who wrote the play Waiting for Godot?

Short Essay Questions

1. What happens to the young child of a friend of Rankine's when he colors Goldilocks's skin brown in his class?

2. What makes Rankine so angry at the play Fairview?

3. In Part IV, what does a white man say to a white woman - ostensibly his partner - when she arrives at the airport gate late?

4. What does Rankine mean when she asks the question, "Whose boys get to be boys?" (264).

5. Which trope does Rankine feel she is "sailing closer and closer to" in Part III at a dinner party and why does she feel this way (149)?

6. What does the white female judge say about her son in Part IV that shocks Rankine?

7. What is one major way Rankine points out in which Black people are historically economically more disadvantaged than whites?

8. In Part IV, what kinds of conversations does Rankine include excerpts from?

9. How does Rankine eventually come to better understand her friend's actions at the play Fairview?

10. What does the term "people of color" mean to Rankine?

(see the answer keys)

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