RC Question 24 Explanation
DISCUSSION: This is a hard question. It’s best to justify your answer on a question like this using the passage. All of the wrong answers are designed to trap you into picking something that’s similar to the passage, but was not in the passage.
Note that the question is asking what Garcia thought about Mexican Americans in general, not just the activists. Garcia’s views on Mexican Americans in general are in paragraph 3, only.
Garcia thought that Mexican Americans as a whole were more politically engaged. Garcia’s only evidence was that the leaders of the Mexican American community were more engaged and assimilated into US culture (lines 43-51).
___________
- The author mentions variations in ethnic consciousness on line 56 as an unknown factor. Garcia never mentioned this term.
- CORRECT. Lines 40-46 say this. A higher proportion of Mexican Americans were born in America, and therefore they were more familiar with American culture. And the word acculturated on line 45 means “assimilated into the dominant culture”.
- Garcia believed the opposite of this. In lines 40-51, Garcia argues that assimilation increased political activity.
- This is a trap answer. Line 49-51 say that leaders of the Mexican American community wanted to achieve full rights. But Garcia doesn’t say they’re militant. Militant is only used on line 10 to describe a different group of Mexican Americans, those from 1960-70.
- This contradicts the passage. Line 48 says that the rhetoric of World War II was inclusive. That means America wanted to welcome all communities to be part of the US. WWII slogans were a positive thing, according to the passage!
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I also had trouble with this. I see how all of them are wrong, except B. But even for B, the author only says that the LEADERS were more acculturated and hence more politically active, but not everyone necessarily. I guess the point is that since the author says “it’s not clear how much this view extended beyond the leaders,” we have to infer that Garcia would say “it definitely extended beyond everyone for the same reasons”…? And in the last sentence, I tried to find support, but I have a semi-hard time necessarily equating that more people are being born in the US to more people being familiar with US culture…is that a fair LSAT assumption to make?
The answer choice just says “increased familiarity among Mexican Americans…”, which translates to at least “a few Mexican Americans.” We know for certain that Garcia argues that at least that generation’s leaders were acculturated and therefore more politically active, and so that group of individuals could be the referent of the Mexican Americans within the answer choice.
for answer choice b, besides using common sense does the garcia say that more people being born in america means that they assimilate into the culture more. i know that assimilating to american culture was an idea given to the League of latin americans but where was this given to garcia in the passage?