Q2, Explained
raveesh1203 wrote:
Need help with Q2 .
According to C. Vann ..Jim crow laws codified traditional practice + effort to erase progress made by black people..
He challenged prevailing dogma when he said this.
So should'nt the prevailing dogma be that jim crows law were passed for uniformity and maintain order ... i.e. option B
Quote:
2. It can be inferred from the passage that the “prevailing dogma” (line 10) held that
To answer this question, let’s take a closer look at the text:
"In the fall of 1954, for example, C. Vann Woodward delivered a lecture series at the University of Virginia which challenged the prevailing dogma concerning the history, continuity, and uniformity of racial segregation in the South.”
"Concerning" means "about." If I mention that I have a belief concerning cat videos, I haven't told you what the content of my belief is. Maybe I love cat videos, or maybe I hate them. Perhaps I have an interesting theory about cat videos and why they’re so popular. Likewise, when the author mentions “the prevailing dogma concerning the history, continuity, and uniformity of racial segregation in the South," we have learned nothing about what the prevailing dogma was. We only know that there was some dominant belief about the history, continuity, and uniformity of racial segregation in the South. Let's keep reading.
"He argued that the Jim Crow laws of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries not only codified traditional practice but also were a determined effort to erase the considerable progress made by Black people during and after Reconstruction in the 1870’s.
Aha! Vann Woodward argued that Jim Crow
not only codified
traditional practice,
but also meant to erase the progress that black people had made. His argument says that Jim Crow wasn't just turning traditions into law (this was the existing belief about the history, continuity, and uniformity of racial segregation). According to Van Woodward, Jim Crow was also undoing progress that black people had had made during Reconstruction (this was the revisionist view that made a big impact on how people interpreted the continuity of Jim Crow as a traditional practice).
To help understand the logical structure here, consider the following example:
- Say that the prevailing dogma about butter is that it is bad for your heart. To keep things simple, let's say that this is the only bad thing about butter according to the prevailing view.
- You then conduct a bunch of research related to butter and conclude that butter also kills brain cells (let's hope not!).
- You then might say, "Butter is NOT ONLY bad for your heart BUT ALSO bad for your brain!"
- The "not only" part was the accepted dogma, while the "but also" was something new. This new discovery challenges the existing view, which is that butter is only bad for your heart.
- Note that you are NOT saying that butter is good for your heart, but you are still challenging the prevailing dogma.
Similarly:
- The prevailing dogma saw Jim Crow as a continuation of traditional, discriminatory practices.
- Vann Woodward argued that Jim Crow was also a reversal of Reconstruction.
Let's make sure we review every answer choice and confirm whether it matches this understanding.
Quote:
(A) Jim Crow laws were passed to give legal status to well-established discriminatory practices in the South
This matches what we’ve read. At the time, people believed that Jim Crow laws had codified (i.e. made into law) traditional practices of discrimination against black people. Vann Woodward challenged this belief in the historical continuity of racial segregation by arguing that Jim Crow laws
also erased the prior progress black people had made during Reconstruction.
Quote:
(B) Jim Crow laws were passed to establish order and uniformity in the discriminatory practices of different southern states
Was the point of Jim Crow to
reduce differences between individual states? No. Vann Woodward challenged a widely held belief in the historical continuity of Jim Crow, not the geographic continuity of Jim Crow. Eliminate (B).
Quote:
(C) Jim Crow laws were passed to erase the social gains that Black people had achieved since Reconstruction
This is what Vann Woodward argued, not the dogma he argued against. Eliminate (C).
Quote:
(D) the continuity of racial segregation in the South was disrupted by passage of Jim Crow laws
Both Vann Woodward and people of his time believed that Jim Crow had codified, not disrupted, traditional practices of racial segregation. Eliminate (D).
Quote:
(E) the Jim Crow laws of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were passed to reverse the effect of earlier Jim Crow laws
There is no mention of "earlier" Jim Crow Laws anywhere in the passage. Eliminate (E).
(A) is the best choice available.
1) People thought that he's doing the OPPOSITE of turning traditions into law. Basically the laws were being eradicated. And,
2) people thought that the laws had a considerable effort to improve the conditions of black people
how would we differentiate this understanding from the one mentioned by you?