Paragraph Summaries
- 19th century African-American historians were transnational, in contrast to mainstream U.S. historians.
This helped them treat African-American history honestly. - Historians debated whether African-Americans should be U.S. citizens or emigrate to a new area.
- African-American historians considered that mainstream nationalism was a form of imperialism.
- African-Americans invented a glorious African past for the purposes of building the African-American community. (Note: this refers at least partly and possibly entirely to an African past, not an African-American one.)
Analysis
This passage discusses the attitudes of African-American historians in the 19th century. I want to clarify something straightaway: you are allowed to use some outside knowledge to inform your reading of this passage.
Students are often afraid to use “common knowledge”. Here’s the rule for how you can apply it: Use the person on the street test. If literally every well informed person would agree with a fact, then that fact is allowed. Here are two facts that you’re allowed to use on this passage:
- U.S. slavery of African-Americans ended in 1865 at the end of the civil war.
- Slavery was very unpleasant for African-Americans, and caused lots of ill-will.
I’ve purposely phrased these vaguely so that virtually 100% of people will agree with them. Obviously, the civil war/slavery remains a controversial topic in the U.S. today, but nonetheless I don’t expect anyone would disagree with the above. So, that means they are facts you can use when interpreting the argument.
Once you keep those two facts in mind, the rest of the passage is a lot clearer. The topics discussed in the passage are as follows:
- African-American history was different [Because they had just gone through the alienating experience of slavery]
- African-Americans were ambivalent about being part of the US. [Because they had until recently been slaves.]
- African-Americans were engaged in nation building with a false past. [Because their actual enslaved past was degrading, and African-Americans freed from slavery needed a shared, positive consciousness to build a culture]
The facts above, outside the brackets, are all in the passage. But the reasons in brackets make the overall theme of the passage much clearer. This is why it’s important to clarify what historical context you’re allowed to assume.
Emigrationism
I think the second paragraph is fairly clear, but I’ll briefly discuss it. The debate about emigration should be viewed in the context of African-American history in the 19th century, and the growth of African-American historical nationalism (paragraph 4).
As discussed below, following slavery, African-Americans were trying to figure out a shared culture and shared nationalism. Could African-Americans be American? They were only given a right to be citizens in 1868 (line 10-13). And from hints in the passage it’s clear that African-Americans didn’t feel entirely welcome in America. See the following line references:
- lines 18-20 “some black leaders insisted on their right to U.S. citizenship”, [i.e. Some white people were trying to deny this citizenship]
- lines 21-24 “not willing to relinquish claims”, “profound pessimism” [Some white people were trying to make them relinquish their claims, and working against them so intensely as to cause pessimism]
Reading between the lines, we can consider that African-Americans had very recently been slaves, and only recently been granted citizenship. Clearly, this citizenship was tenuous. Again, you can draw on some outside knowledge: after Reconstruction ended in the South, southern states introduced Jim Crow laws which significantly restricted African-Americans’ citizenship rights. This happened in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: precisely the historical period this passage is discussing (lines 1-5).
That context helps you understand why African Americans felt ambivalent about US citizenship and were considering leaving for a new homeland. You not only can but must think about this kind of context when reading RC. Remember, I’m only referring to facts that no informed person would disagree with: and no one disputes the existence of Jim Crow laws.
This helps answer question 22, for example, and sheds some light on question 26. It’s much easier to properly understand paragraph 2 and the questions that depend on it if you consider the historical context.
African-American Historical Nationalism
The final paragraph has an important nuance. In line 47 the author said that African-American historians reconstructed a glorious African past. (In full dictionaries, one definition of reconstruct is “remodel”.) And in lines 54-55, the author talked about diasporas creating a nationalism with a single culture, “however mythical”. And mainstream US nationalism (and presumably all nationalism) was itself mythical (lines 30-35).
What does this mean? It means the author is strongly implying that the African-American scholars were inventing a mythical historical past for African-Americans, for the purposes of nation building in the present.
(The author didn’t necessarily say this was wrong of the historians to do. They had good reasons.)
The LSAT ruthlessly tests your ability to spot small nuances like this. A lot of students mistakenly think this passage is talking about a return to an actual, African past. In reality, the historians’ concern was for the present: the idea of a glorious past could help build African-American community spirit in the present.
This also explains the third paragraph. It might seem that the nationalism/imperialism discussion is not directly relevant to the rest of the passage. You’d be right, the author doesn’t link imperialism to anything else.
This nationalism/imperialism contrast was instead mentioned only to highlight an inconsistency: African-Americans critiqued nationalism, yet the fourth paragraph describes how they engaged in nationalism themselves.
Unusually, the author both approves of African-American historians yet also gently criticizes them. Typically, LSAT authors are entirely for or against those they discuss. LSAT passages also tend to be entirely uncritical of African-Americans, so it’s easy to miss that this author was (slightly) criticizing them.
The author is sympathetic to the circumstances that required African-American historians to focus on distinct historical issues. But at the start of the final paragraph, the author points out “Yet, for all their distrust….black historians….engaged in….nation building”.
When an LSAT author say “yet” or “but”, this should be interpreted as a criticism. However, in this case, the criticism is minor, as the rest of the fourth paragraph makes clear the author understands the aim of the African-American historians.
Incidentally, I’m Canadian. I don’t normally consider it my place to write about racial issues in the United States. Nor do I consider it wise, considering how controversial the topic remains today. But, I need to provide commentary for this passage, and I don’t believe this passage can be understood separately from the larger issues faced by African-Americans at that time. Nor do I think I should leave off discussing the author’s criticism in paragraph 4, because otherwise many students would miss it.
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