17. The passage supplies information that would answer which of the following questions?
(A) What accounts for the prejudice against the Jews in medieval Europe?.
No information in the passage.(B) What conditions caused the discrimination against Oriental people in California in the early twentieth century?.
No information in the passage(C) Which groups are not in ethnic competition with each other in the United States?.
No information in the passage.(D) What explanation did the Marxist sociologist give for the existence of racial prejudice?.
Correct. This is what the passage is about.(E) What evidence did the Marxist sociologist provide to support his thesis?.
No information in the passage.18. The author considers the Marxist sociologist's thesis about the origins of racial prejudice to be
(A) unoriginal
(B) unpersuasive.
Correct.(C) offensive
(D) obscure
(E) speculative
relevant lines from the passage: He disposes thusly (
albeit unconvincingly) of both the intolerance faced by Jews before the rise of capitalism and the early twentieth-century discrimination against Oriental people in California, which, inconveniently, was instigated by workers.
19. It can be inferred from the passage that the Marxist sociologist would argue that in a noncapitalist society racial prejudice would be
(A) pervasive
(B) tolerated
(C) ignored
(0) forbidden
(E) nonexistent.
Correct.relevant lines from the passage:A Marxist sociologist has argued that racism stems from the class struggle that is unique to the capitalist system-that racial prejudice-is generated by capitalists as a means of controlling workers.
20. According to the passage, the Marxist sociologist's chain of reasoning required him to assert that prejudice toward Oriental people in California was
(A) directed primarily against the Chinese
(B) similar in origin to prejudice against the Jews
(C) understood by Oriental people as ethnic competition
(D) provoked by workers
(E) nonracial in character.
Correct.relevant lines from the passage:However, since prejudice against these latter peoples was not inspired by capitalists, he has to reason that such antagonisms
were not really based on race.
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