PT7.S3.Q23 (P4) - organization of the passage

babybenny

I don't understand why E is wrong.
Can anyone explain me why E is wrong?
Thanks!

retaker2014

I just took this PT last week, so I'll chip in.

Choice E tries to say three things about the passage:

1) The passage is about the legal status of an ethnic group...

2)...with regards to land ownership and commercial autonomy.

And 3) it shows how rival groups benefit from that particular legal status.

Irregardless; when you first read the passage, you should have found that:

The passage is about the Dawes Act, and how Native Americans weren't allowed to sell their land until 25 years of ownership had passed. This passage suggests that the law's particular clause on 25-year-ownership was set in place as a compromise between non-Native Americans that wanted to buy land and politicians in power that wanted to extend their patronage networks - in this case through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

So...

Is the passage about the legal status of an ethnic group? No. It's about certain legal rights an ethnic group had under a certain law. Their status is never in question.

Does the passage talk about an ethnic group with regards to land ownership and commercial autonomy with regards to legal matters? Well, kinda. It, even suggests that the ethnic group in question should have been able to sell their land to each other, or back to their tribe. But commercial autonomy extends far past simply the buying and selling of land, so this is a bit exaggerated.

Does the passage talk about how rival group benefitted from that particular legal status? Well, groups benefitted. But not from a legal status, but from a particular law. And what's more is...did the Native Americans have rival groups according to the passage? Not really. Non-Native Americans wanted to take advantage of the Native Americans, but that didn't make them rivals. If anything the politicians and the land grabbers could be seen as each other's rivals. But that doesn't necessarily fit into how the answer choice vaguely states 'rival groups'.

I hope this clears it up for you. Be careful when you read through answer choices. When reviewing, a good tip for understanding why a choice of this question type is wrong is to go back and test each tenet of the answer choice by finding hard evidence for it in the passage.

babybenny

Thank you so much! It's really helpful!