While historians once propagated the myth that Africans who were brought to the New World as slaves contributed little of value but their labor, a recent study by Amelia Wallace Vernon helps to dispel this notion by showing that Africans introduced rice and the methods of cultivating it into what is now the United States in the early eighteenth century. ███
Conventional View / New View ·African slaves in US contributed only their labor / No, they also introduced rice cultivation
Evidence for New View ·Document with instructions to bring slaves with knowledge of rice cultivation to the New World
Document dates the instructions to 1718, decades before the arrival of the French Acadians who were previously thought to have introduced rice cultivation to the New World.
Answer 1 / Explanation ·Plantation owners also ate rice; growing rice was a relief for slaves
Plantation owners wanted to eat rice so demanded it to be grown. Growing rice was a form of relief for the slaves because they could work without supervision.
Explanation ·They transformed the land to make it their own
They did grow rice but that wasn't the point. They wanted to transform the land because they viewed the land as an extension of themselves and so wanted to take care of it and really make it theirs.
Hypothesis ·Rice cultivation may also have been a political act
Transforming the land to grow rice where previously the land was used to grown cotton is a symbolic and political act to assert their freedom and ownership over the land.
Passage Style
Phenomenon-hypothesis
Single position
27.
The author's primary purpose in ███ ███████ ██ ██
Question Type
Implied
Purpose of passage
The author’s primary purpose is to tell us about Vernon’s study and her hypotheses.
This doesn’t capture the purpose of describing Vernon’s hypotheses. Although Vernon did find evidence of a phenomenon, most of the passage concerns Vernon’s hypotheses to explain that phenomenon.
b
illustrate the historical ██████████ ██ █ ████████ ██████████
This doesn’t capture the purpose of describing Vernon’s hypotheses.
c
present a historian's ████████ █████ █ ████████ ██████████
This best describes the primary purpose. The author wants to present Vernon’s theories for what explains the phenomenon of African American rice cultivation in the United States during and after slavery.
d
criticize the work ██ ████████ ██████████ █████████ █ ████████ ██████████
Although the author does mention at the beginning that certain historians are proven wrong by Vernon’s study, this isn’t the focus of the passage. The author wants to describe Vernon’s hypotheses.
This doesn’t capture the purpose of describing Vernon’s hypotheses.
Difficulty
84% of people who answer get this correct
This is a moderately difficult question.
It is somewhat easier than other questions in this passage.
CURVE
Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right
25%142
152
75%161
Analysis
Implied
Purpose of passage
Humanities
Phenomenon-hypothesis
Single position
Answer Popularity
PopularityAvg. score
a
9%
162
b
5%
158
c
84%
168
d
2%
159
e
1%
159
Question history
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