Black officers at the executive rank of general or admiral of whom

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(C) is the answer IMO


Black officers at the executive rank of general or admiral, of whom there are over seventy in the armed services, have not, until recently, been present in comparable numbers, either in amount or proportion, among high executives in major corporations.

Let us get rid of adverbial phrases and modifiers :

Black officers at the executive rank of general or admiral have not been present in comparable numbers, either in amount or proportion, among high executives in major corporations.


Parallelism is lost because of missing in before proportion
Correct version could be : either in amount or in proportion / in either amount or proportion .

Also,
We are comparing the count so using amount is not appropriate.


Now we have adverbs which can not modify numbers + redundancy
Issue present in A regarding use of amount persists in B


Parallelism is gained and amount is replaced with numbers - Keep



Black officers have not been matched by Blacks...
Distorts the meaning and retains the issue of using "amount"


Distorts meaning: proportions of blacks - that's not the comparison that author intends to do

The actual sentence -
Black officers at the executive rank of general or admiral, of whom there are over seventy in the armed services, have not, until recently, been present in comparable numbers, either in amount or proportion, among high executives in major corporations.

can be simply reduced to -

Black officers have not been present in comparable numbers,either in amount or proportion, among high executives in major corporations.

Note that the above sentence ruins the parallelism of Either X OR Y
We can eliminate (A).

Choices C and D imply that
Black officers have not been matched by Blacks ( or something of Blacks) ... - This makes no sense.
Choice (B) says -
Black officers have not been present in comparable numbers, either numerically or proportionally, among high executives.
This sentence is grammatically correct. The adverbs numerically and proportionally modify the verb "present"
But, look at the meaning.
The phrase "present in comparable numbers" clearly imply the numerical presence. It's incorrect to say "Present in comparable numbers, numerically or proportionally"

Choice (C) fixes the above issue and has no grammatical issue as well.

IMO C

Black officers at the executive rank of general or admiral, of whom there are over seventy in the armed services, have not, until recently, been present in comparable numbers, either in amount or proportion, among high executives in major corporations.

IMO C

A) present in comparable numbers, either in amount or proportion,

B) present in comparable numbers, either numerically or proportionally

C) present in comparable numbers or proportion

D) matched by Blacks in either comparable amount or proportion

E) matched by a comparable number or proportion of Blacks

Reasoning:-
1. A has parallelism issue- either in amount or proportion- should use in once outside or twice inside.
2. B fixes the issue in A but there is an issue with repetition of comparison in numbers- present in comparable numbers, either numerically or proportionally.
3. D and E- Black officers......have not been matched by Blacks/ matched by a comparable.....meaning error.
C is concise and gramatically correct.

How the OA is E??

generis @banuel

Please provide the explanation.

Posted from my mobile device

generis
Please post the POE.
I thought B or C are both better answers than E.

Posted from my mobile device

GMATNinja

Why E is preferred over C and B?
Can you please provide POE?

Posted from my mobile device

My First Choice and the one that i selected was C,

BUT why i feel E is correct might be because,
there is a comparison of "black officers", but with whom is it compared ??
Also, if we read sentence wholly, it says: compared to the number of black people present, the number of black generals is not comparable (number wise or proportion wise).

Just a Analysis.

The comparison is between 'Black officers at the executive rank of General or admiral' and 'Black high executives in major corporations'. The intended meaning is that the there are more of the former than that of the latter.

1. A, B and C are wrong because of the wrong comparison. You do not have 'Black officers at the executive rank of General or admiral' in corporations.

2. D is eliminated because of the incorrect usage of amount.

Hence, E.

Posted from my mobile device

well, the answer is E because it compares the no. of black officers in the executive ranks in armed services as against major corporations. Which until recently is unmatched (very less to be precise). So A, B & C are clear No.
While D seems to match the amount & proportion of black in both of the organisations (seems like a comparison of colour gradient instead of nos. based on ethnicity).

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