AP Language & Composition
Sample Responses to Questions on The New Jim Crow Chapter 1
1. What’s the major point(s) she makes in this chapter?
That racist institutions eventually collapse because of internal weaknesses, but that they are reconstituted by those who perceive it to be in their interest to keep them alive
2. How, basically, does she back up her central contention(s)?
With an historical overview of different stages of racial oppression in the US: from indentured servitude to slavery to convict labor to Jim Crow to mass incarceration
3. Very briefly, what is the purpose of paragraph 1 on p. 20?
To provide historical context/overview for discussion of different stages of racial oppression that follows.
(It’s clear that this is what she does by looking at the subheadings throughout the rest of the chapter.)
4. How would you label what Alexander is doing in the last five sentences of the paragraph that begins on p. 20?
Counterargument (She’s introducing the argument, which she disagrees with, that the success of some African Americans is proof that the racial caste system is over.)
5. How would you label what Alexander is doing in the two full paragraphs on p. 21?
Refutations (two of them) of the counterargument referenced in #4.
6. Without reading the rest of the paragraph, what do you expect the sentences following the first one that begins the paragraph at the bottom of p. 21 to be about? (You may need to read the last sentence of the previous paragraph in order to answer this question.)
She’s going to provide historical evidence of the transformation of systems of racial oppression that benefit whites.
7. PARAPHRASE PRACTICE: “The most ardent proponents of racial hierarchy have consistently succeeded in implementing new racial caste systems by triggering a collapse of resistance across the political spectrum.” (p. 22)
The people who are most anxious to maintain systems of racial oppression have never failed to set up new systems by destroying political opposition to it.
8. What do you expect to follow the claim made at the end of the partial paragraph at the top of p. 22?
Something about (evidence of) the exploitation by powerful whites of their less economically well-off peers to achieve the former’s purpose of establishing and maintaining the privileged status of all whites?
9. What do you expect to follow the claim made in the 2nd sentence of the first full paragraph on p. 22?
Some discussion of what existed between Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras and how whatever that was led to the establishment of Jim Crow
10. PARAPHRASE PRACTICE: last full paragraph on p. 22: “However any notion … Klan”
Although each new system of racial oppression dominates an increasingly smaller percentage of the target population, the conditions imposed upon successive populations do not necessarily improve, AND they are more difficult to escape.
11. What do you expect to follow the claim made in the penultimate sentence of the second full paragraph on p. 22?
Evidence that systems of racial oppression are increasingly difficult to escape from with each new iteration (version).
12. PREDICTION PRACTICE: Based on what Alexander writes on pages 20-22, what do you think the rest of the chapter is going to be about?
Again, the rise and fall of different systems of racial oppression (in chronological order).
13. What information that is not provided would validate the claim made in the quotation of Lerone Bennett, Jr. that ends at the top of page 23?
Evidence that he is a credible source. (I personally wasn’t that impressed when I looked up his credentials.)
14. PARAPHRASE PRACTICE: first full paragraph on p. 23: “Here in America … the new colonies”
Racism really only emerged in this country when those in power (whites) realized they had to find a way to square what they said about equality for all with their desire to get rid of Native Americans.
15. What is Alexander saying about the nature of Black labor in the early colonial period?
That they were indentured servants – not slaves – and that they were thus on a somewhat equal footing with their white counterparts.
16. Comment on the strength of Alexander’s claim in the penultimate sentence of the second full paragraph on p. 23.
No source is referenced; quantification (estimate of the number of such laborers) is absent: therefore not as compelling (to me, at least!)
17. What assertion is Alexander trying to support when she writes, in the last full paragraph on p. 23, that “the images of American Indians promoted in books, newspapers, and magazines became increasingly negative.”
The idea (in the first full paragraph on this page) that people only started to think in terms of race when they had to come up with an excuse for treating them poorly.
18. PARAPHRASE PRACTICE: P. 24 – LAST SENTENCE OF 1ST FULL PARAGRAPH. “Southern colonies … revolt.”
Freemen in the South resented the measures enacted to deprive them of access to land – including the purchase of uncultivated land by wealthy planters - that revolt against the system was inevitable.
19. PREDICTION PRACTICE: read the first sentence of the last paragraph on p. 24 and predict what paragraph is going to be about.
The new strategy employed by planters to maintain their control and thereby protect their privileged status.
20. How does the first sentence in the 2nd full paragraph on. 25 relate to any of central claims made by Alexander in the first part of this chapter?
It relates to the central claim that new systems of racial oppression emerge when old ones no longer serve the purposes of the oppressor.
21. What central argument of Alexander’s is supported by the first sentence in the first full paragraph on p. 30?
The idea that race-based discrimination/persecution doesn’t naturally occur without being pushed by those who have an interest in making it happen.