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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. How did Richard Wright want to present blacks in his books?
(a) As collaborators in their own oppression.
(b) As something other than victims.
(c) As agents in the oppression of others.
(d) As victims of white power.

2. What were Richard Wright's politics?
(a) Communist.
(b) Socialist.
(c) Anti-imperialist.
(d) Militarist.

3. What heresy did Richard Wright commit, in Gilroy's account?
(a) Saying that blacks shared responsibility for their situation.
(b) Saying that blacks really were inferior to whites, in certain cases.
(c) Saying that black liberation was impossible, because the self is an endless war against itself.
(d) Saying that history would repeat itself with slavery.

4. What does Gilroy say slavery tried to do to tradition?
(a) Co-opt it.
(b) Rewrite it.
(c) Compete with it.
(d) Erase it.

5. What primary experience shaped violence in the black community according to Gilroy?
(a) Slavery.
(b) Capitalist exploitation.
(c) Factory production.
(d) Modern marriage.

Short Answer Questions

1. What horrified Richard Wright in Gilroy's account?

2. What ontological state does Gilroy say is the heart of many stories in black culture?

3. Which factor did NOT divide black subjectivity according to Gilroy's account of Richard Wright's thought?

4. What movement is Richard Wright associated with?

5. What does Gilroy say is the result of racial identity?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why was Wright criticized for his characterizations, according to Gilroy?

2. In what way was capitalist culture a kind of crisis in itself, Wright?

3. What tension did politics create in black culture?

4. Why do Jews and blacks both resist the comparison of slavery and the Holocaust, as Gilroy describes it?

5. How does Gilroy say the discussion he has had in 'Black Atlantic' is likely to help in the twenty-first century, when Western culture faces challenges over resources and sustainability?

6. What relation does Gilroy draw between the black Atlantic and the Holocaust?

7. Why, in Gilroy's opinion, is tradition useful in modern black culture?

8. What did DuBois conclude from his observations of black culture?

9. What was DuBois' relation with blackness?

10. Describe the role of the concept of tradition in the black Atlantic.

(see the answer keys)

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