Careful, you’ll start drawing fire on this forum with a comment like that. People don’t want their anti-Southern prejudices challenged, nor do they want to look in the mirror.
Sure they do. They talk about how people in the South need to work on it.
Only partly kidding on that last one.
Keep your balanced and nuanced views, my friend. They are a rare commodity in a world that wants self-affirming sound bites and simple answers.
I do have an axe to grind, yes.
I am a person who daily takes action to fight racism. Not on computer forums, in real life. Ever had racists spray paint death threats on the sidewalk behind your house? I have. Are you what the Phineas Priesthood calls a “race traitor”, marked for death? I am.
Unfortunately, some of what’s going on in this thread is people who want to have their biases confirmed looking for people they can beat up while feeling good about doing so. It looks like stereotypical Yankee hypocrisy to me (I am not a Southerner, so I’ve seen a lot of Yankee hypocrites who talk egalitarianism whilst living in lily-white communities where they never actually have to talk to a person of color).
It seems some folks here have decided they can interpret history without sources or cites or knowledge - making up shit as they go along - and that anyone who says otherwise is fair game to be called a racist or historical revisionist.
I see no evidence this test was distributed without a key and I can find several sources of “correct” answers by googling - not that the loudest mouths here have done any research, of course.
The narrative of “the answers change” might be true. But nobody here has shown any evidence of that - they just want that to be true so that they can beat up Alice and feel superior. I hate that shit.
When I saw this story, I was thinking I’d do the same next time I teach the US survey. You’re experience shows me it might be worth it to incorporate it. But as @Jonam pointed out below, since Australia had similar “tests” to weed out non-Europeans from immigrating, maybe I could incorporate something like this into my modern world survey which I am planning for the spring. I think I could focus it on the period of high imperialism and what Lake and Reynolds discuss as the period of constructing white national identity around the world, really as a period of insecurity for whites, not really from a perspective of strength and self-assurance. This is especially true since there were real challenges emerging against white supremacy world wide.
Thanks for sharing!
Also, I think some states had “grandfather clauses” for the children and grandchildren of confederate veterans, I think. Plus, I think that any time poor whites got unruly, it proved a useful check on that population as well (think the populist movement, which I think there is still some debate on whether or not it was gear towards combining the issues of poor white and black farmers into their national platform).
While elite whites in the “new south” were most certainly racist, but they certainly looked down on poor whites, too. It was just a bit more advantageous for them to give the whites a “status wage” via whiteness, as opposed to actually making things better for everyone.
One could advocate/lobby for open primaries as we have in Michigan rather than registering with a political party one finds distasteful.
Look at this link detailing somebody’s actual experience with how the tests were administered. The wording of the questions, and that question in particular, is vague enough that you could argue multiple different answers as being correct (or incorrect), if you so choose. And that does, in fact, make this test impossible to pass, if the person grading it doesn’t want you to pass. So you can argue as much as you want about how this test isn’t actually impossible, but it really, truly, is. The questions themselves? Not necessarily. But the whole test as it stood (including the way it was graded, the timeframe that you were given to answer it, etc), is definitely impossible to pass if the grader doesn’t want you to pass.
Well, the Slate article itself says “The (white) registrar would be the ultimate judge of whether an answer was correct.” - that’s certainly an implication that there was no actual answer key. And the slate article links to the site I gave above, one civil rights worker’s personal experiences with the literacy tests at the time, and his account also seems to imply that there was no actual answer key used to grade it, since blacks with the same answers as whites would be marked as incorrect. His site is the source of the tests, so he could probably be considered a decent resource to ask about how it was graded. I mean, he could be “making shit up as he goes along” or a historical revisionist himself, but I mean, he certainly has better authority to say what he experienced at the time than we do.
You answered the HIPPA question incorrectly. If the service is available 24/7/365, it is also available daily from 8am to 5pm. Your answer suggests that the service would only be availabe from 5pm to 8am or not available at all.
The general interpretation of these tests being applied arbitrarily is the generally accepted historical narrative of these tests now and I think the historically correct one. The notion that these tests had objective answers, in the way they were actually applied in real life, even if there was a key, is kind of silly, given the sole purpose of these tests were indeed to keep some people from voting. There was no other reason for these tests to exist. Can you find me a working historian who contradicts that notion, based on the existence of an answer key?
@IronEdithKidd wrote: You answered the HIPPA question incorrectly. If the service is available 24/7/365, it is also available daily from 8am to 5pm. Your answer suggests that the service would only be availabe from 5pm to 8am or not available at all.
Here’s what happened. I took the test, answered rationally, and was informed that my answer was incorrect and that I was required to change it. I followed instructions.
But then I sent this message (here cut and pasted from my records & redacted) to the quiz author:
XXXXX,
I have answered the questions as required, however, I feel obligated
by the XXXXX code of ethics to point out that the HIPAA quiz grading
is broken.The question “The XXXXXX Hotline is available Monday through Friday
from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. EST” is required to be marked “NO”.Obviously, since the Hotline is in fact available twenty-four hours a
day, seven days a week, the correct answer to this question is “YES”.Perhaps the question is missing the word “only” between the words “is”
and “available”? Changing the phrase to “is ONLY available” would
make the test grading correct (reference: Aristotle, Peri Hermaneias,
chapter 7).
Do you like the cite? I thought it rather a nice way to point out the error, since I normally work with engineers who are pretty rough with their communications.
The result was that I was verbally reprimanded by the Director of Human Resources, who informed me that I was never to put such a statement in writing again (in the future, I am to use the telephone, because written missives are rude and impersonal). Furthermore, she informed me that the quiz was correct, would not be changed, and it would be against my best interests to argue the point.
See, some people, once they’ve staked out a position, are incapable of changing or backtracking or admitting any possibility of error. Pan up to see more examples.
I didn’t say it was a stack of documentation regarding that term (and I can’t imagine why I would even want such a thing) It’s just a huge stack of documents. I’don’t have time to do this right now, nor will I spend any additional time on it for your personal benefit given your attitude toward me. You have a surname and a location (Lunenberg Cty, VA), and the woman’s tribe. The Saponi are recognized by the state of NC. So, you can look it up as easily as anyone else. If you want it posted elsewhere, by all means, go for it. This particular usage is completely unrelated to the Melungeon people of WV and their various arguments and theories afaik, so I doubt anyone was looking for it for those purposes.
[quote=“anon61221983, post:157, topic:10487”]The general interpretation of these tests being applied arbitrarily is the generally accepted historical narrative of these tests now and I think the historically correct one.[/quote] I’m tempted to ask you to exhaustively prove that. But you’re being nice, and actually I completely agree with the above statement anyway.
[quote=“anon61221983, post:157, topic:10487”]The notion that these tests had objective answers, in the way they were actually applied in real life, even if there was a key, is kind of silly, given the sole purpose of these tests were indeed to keep some people from voting.[/quote]It is not necessary to assume that there is no test key in order to conclude that thee test is clearly designed to prevent people from voting. Not only is the requirement for perfect accuracy ridiculous (see, for example, the request to freehand bisect a line) the time limit is unreasonable even for persons like myself who can answer these questions.
These tests were given to people whose education and literacy were being challenged. In Louisiana, in 1964. You don’t have to assume that every voting judge was a mustache-twirling villain who gleefully changed the answers, in order to conclude that people’s right to vote was being unfairly taken away from them! Half the people given this test probably didn’t have store-bought clothes.
The actual language used on the test itself vs. the context under which it was used or abused are two entirely different questions. If the intent was to abuse the test takers and that is all you are interested in, then it doesn’t matter to you what the actual language employed in the questions was. The topic at hand was actually whether the test, as presented, was intelligible, as some claim that it is not. intelligible in their view. A couple of us say we found it to be intelligible.
That’s it. That’s all there is to it. An opinion on the language does not equal an opinion on voting rights, nor vice versa.
None of your comments have made me think you are a racist, and my comment that you are replying to was not meant to imply that you were racist in any way.
I was just arguing about the merits of this particular test, and if I have offended you at all with a poorly worded comment, I apologize.
It was not my intention to start a fight, and I hope after this reply that you don’t feel I was being antagonistic.
I lived in Wilmington for nearly twenty years. We probably have a friend or two in common.
I guess I’m confused, as I thought that you were arguing that there was a key, hence some attempt to bring objectivity to the test.
And I’m normally nice with people who I don’t think are just being racist trollies. I don’t think you’re being a racist trolley, hence I was nice. 
Your proposed solution has already been addressed. Exactly what is ambiguous about it has been explained (e.g., what definition of “line”; there is no “flat part” at the bottom of a ⋃ shape; etc.) and you’ve chosen to ignore the explanation (and misuse the word “literal” to boot.) Maintaining that there are clearly obvious answers to these questions is a sign of stubborn ignorance, not effortless intellect.
Oh, no, vrplumber. I didn’t not take that from what you said. And really, I should apologize to you, the way my reply came out, it looked like i was replying directly to you when that wasn’t what I intended. Any vitriole was intended for the trolls only. My bad. I got what you were saying, and it made fine sense.
I’m still really pretty shocked that the questions themselves were so unfathomable to so many. There was certainly some trolling going on - but the reaction itself was clearly real enough.
I guess, when a President of the United States appeared on national television and said, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is?” and smirked like he thought the questioner had asked a dumb question, I should’ve realized something freaky was going on with the language instead of assuming he was just being an entitled db about it. Something has happened. But how it happened, I do not profess to know. Maybe this is the 'New English? Like the ‘New Math’ that confused so many, just with words.
I don’t have my report card. 5th grade was the last one I passed. I also don’t have a mom to keep stuff for me.
There is no way for me to pass that test either.
Should I be allowed to vote?
I didn’t mean to reply to wysinwyg. Oops.
I feel like we’re just not connecting here, in any meaningful way. Either I’m not making myself clear or you’re misreading the point I (and others) am trying to make. It actually does matter what the language employed in the questions was, because the test takers can pretend that it’s a fair test - “Oh, you just misread the question because you’re not literate enough!” The test is written in such a way that several of the questions could be interpreted to be asking different things, depending on the answer given. While there are a few people in this thread claiming that some questions have no answers, I’m not one of those people. What I’m claiming is that several questions have MULTIPLE right answers. Which makes it impossible to pass. I understand that you have a problem with people using that word to describe this test, but I think it’s pretty apt.
I don’t think your opinion on the test has any bearing on your opinion on voting rights, nor did I say that I did. I was just taking issue with the fact that you think it wasn’t impossible to pass, when it pretty clearly was written to be exactly that.
i think you’re quite right. we aren’t connecting on this at all. I was accustomed to this kind of thing on tests at schools I attended all over the country. So, I see nothing odd or impossible about it. What I did see, was some incredibly strange (to me) attempts at parsing the questions.
Actually, it was Medievalist that got me to thinking that something may have changed about the way grammar is taught. He got it, I got it, and judging by what I saw written, most of those who didn’t get it are much younger. Maybe there is something to that. I don’t know.
I don’t disagree as to the intents surrounding the tests one little bit. I know what they were and what they were used for. I simply did not see it in the actual language used. If my idea about how we are taught is correct, then it would stand to reason that the people given the test probably didn’t find it confusing, either, considering how long ago it was in use. It might as well say, “Bisect thee the vertical, having no straight tracing but for said bisecting scribe.” You see what I mean? It’s…readable. Just archaic in form. Perhaps, something like that?
And, it wasn’t even necessary to do anything with that, given the time limits and how any disagreements were settled. I mean, seriously - if somebody told you you had to take a test AT ALL…would you even bother showing up? I sure wouldn’t bother.
