Q16

[stol1989]

I can't understand how can "E" be the passage's main point. When I finished the passage the main point that I got was like this - Rise and decline of African-American participation in the Communist party of Alabama.
Paragraph 1. Introduces book Hammer and Hoe and it's author, D.G. Kelley. Line 3 articulates author's purpose in writing Hammer and Hoe - to explore how AA workers could embrace and use Communist Party as a vehicle for organizing themselves.
Paragraph 2. Introduces Popular Front period of Communist Party and enumerates some features of it. Further paragraph says that these features were not of a great interest for author's purpose.
Paragraph 3. Introduces Third Period and says that Third period was responsible for rise of AA participation in the CP.
Paragraph 4. Popular Front period's rhetoric was responsible for decline of AA participation in CP.
Paragraph 5. Popular Front period's rhetoric was indeed responsible for decline but only partially. There were more important contributors.

I have Superprep and its explanation says that "The main point of the passage is that Kelley's book Hammer and Hoe breaks new ground by portraying the Communist Party's Popular Front as a period of decline."

But I was strongly convinced that the main point is about "how Communist Party came to attract substantial number of AA workers."

It seems to me that LSAC and me read different passages

Please HELP!

[ohthatpatrick]

This may be a long-winded response, but I thought I would read the passage and offer you my realtime thinking BEFORE I've read your passage summary and BEFORE I've looked at any answer choices.

Here's what I was thinking about as I read the passage (if you're familiar with Manhattan LSAT's P.E.A.R. process, this is essentially what I'm recounting to you):

1st line makes it clear that the topic of this passage is a book. Generally, when a passage is about a book, there are three options for the purpose/main point:
1. To summarize the main points of the book (fairly neutral tone - main point would be the best overarching or noteworthy idea the book's author wants to communicate)
2. To criticize some aspect of the book (opinionated tone - normally the author of the passage agrees with much of what the book's author did/said but points out that the book's author failed to consider something important)
3. To clarify a misconception critics have of the book (opinionated tone - normally we get to hear what critics have typically said about this book before the author of the passage swings in with a but/yet/however towards the end and 'sets the record straight')

So as soon as the 1st sentence is done, I start wondering which of these paths we're going down.

It's hard to tell by the end of the 1st paragraph, but so far it's just been doing #1, summarizing the book's key points. Several times in this passage, the author says that the book is "not doing ___ but ___". These are important distinctions that will likely appear in the questions.

So from P1, I get:
- we're discussing this book about communism in 1930's-ish Alabama
- book wants to focus on how African American workers could embrace communism and how communism could serve as an organizing force

P2 starts of with a "MOST scholarship has said ____", which is a classic LSAT setup for but/yet/however THIS guy says something different. Indeed, P2 seems to reiterate P1's point that this book is mainly concerned with how the communist party worked as an organizing force. The important line seems to be 20-21 ... the Popular Front was NOT good as an organizing force.

P3 explains that the preceding period of the communist party WAS a good organizing force (strong rhetoric appealed to sense of deliverance ... help from afar).

P4 returns to the idea that the Popular Front was NOT as good as an organizing force and led to a decline in African-American participation (more moderate tendencies weren't as conducive to what African Americans found appealing about the preceding period).

P5 is more of a summary/takeaway paragraph. The book does not completely BLAME the Popular Front, because other unrelated factors apparently also led to the declining African American participation during that time period.

Okay, so this was definitely a #1 ... the author just summarized the key points of the book. There's almost no opinion from the author, so we need to think about Main Point in terms of the main points of the book:
- Kelley cared about organizing potential of the communist party for African Americans
- Third Period was better at organizing/enthusing African Americans than Popular Front was (although other factors contributed to the decline)

Those are the big ideas I would think would be in the correct answer choice, but let's see what we can get rid of:

(A) "fails to fully explicate" is the giveaway for me here. The author wasn't slamming the book. There was almost ZERO author opinion.

(B) "ideological purity" and "effecting political change" strike me as out of scope. These weren't among any of the big ideas I remember reading about.

(C) Maybe? "valuable tool" is pretty opinionated, and I don't know if I have support for that. I didn't think "models of unity between radicals and liberals" was a big idea, either. (If you research this line in P2, you see that this phrase was used to describe OTHER authors, not Kelley.)

(D) "true measure of success" seems loaded. Did we talk about "interacting with their culture"? Is that the same as "serving as an organizing force"? This answer choice doesn't even mention the book. Wasn't that the focus of the passage. This answer choice acts like the Communist Party is the main focus of the passage.

(E) "offers new insights" is a little loaded, but otherwise this is a generic way of talking about the fact that the Third Period was better at organizing/exciting African Americans than the Popular Front was. Can I find textual support for "offers new insights" so that I can confirm this? Kinda. The "most scholarship" detail from line 10 allows me to say that Kelley's is different. That seems to be the only supporting line for "new insights". Not perfect, but this seems way closer than the other ones so I'd go with it.

Okay ... now that I'm done with that unbiased recap, I just read your passage summary. Looks like you nailed it (I say, arrogantly, because we pretty much got the same thing out of it).

I agree that (E) is a weirdly worded answer, but a lot of RC is about accepting the answer that isn't technically wrong.

I think the answer choice and the Superprep explanation you cited are going overboard with saying "new insights" and "breaks new ground".

However, there's definitely textual support for the idea that Kelley's perspective was not like MOST scholarship. I think the fact that there were also three sentences in which the author said that Kelley was "not doing ____ but rather doing ___ " is also giving us reason to believe that the 1st half of those thoughts is the TYPICAL approach, making Kelley's 2nd half a more unique take on the subject.

I notice you haven't mentioned any other answer choice that you like more than (E). Let your takeaway from this question be that we often have to get the credited response by being confident about eliminating the broken choices.

Let me know if you have lingering qualms/questions.

[stol1989]

Thank you for such a detailed response!!!

(D) "true measure of success" seems loaded. Did we talk about "interacting with their culture"? Is that the same as "serving as an organizing force"? This answer choice doesn't even mention the book. Wasn't that the focus of the passage. This answer choice acts like the Communist Party is the main focus of the passage.

I have a different view about "D"
Line 4 - Kelley asks...how these workers could embrace and use the Communist Party as a vehicle for organizing themselves.
Line 8 - He insists on measuring communism...by its ability to interact with a CULTURE

Line 25 Extreme rhetoric wasn't responsible for organizing...
Line 29 (Contrast)on another level...rhetoric regarding a "new world" RESONATED among African-Americans, whose TRADITIONS emphasized both a struggle for survival and the transcendent hope of deliverance.
Line 35 "worldwide efforts of the communist-led Int Labor Defense in mobilizing against lynch law in US" resonated with "struggle for survival"
"Help...from Moscow...source of power and possibility" resonated with "transcendent hope of deliverance"

Let's combine Line 4 Line 8 and Line 29.
1) The purpose of the book is to find how Communist party could attract African-Americans and how African-Americans could benefit from it.
2)In order to answer these questions author suggests to focus on Communism's ability to interact with AA culture.
3) Explains in details how Communist Party's rhetoric attracted AA by appealing to AA traditional values.

After drawing these points line "The true measure of success...AT ORGANIZING" doesn't seem to me biased.

"D" says that "The true measure of the success of the Communist Party at organizing African-American workers was not its ability to change people's thinking but to interact with their culture."

I think that part highlighted in red is what makes "D" wrong. Passage never says that changing the way AA think wasn't a major contributor to organizing AA. It could be true and it could even seem plausible, but nevertheless, it isn't supported. If we ignore that part or substitute it with *not its extreme rhetoric* "D" would be valid answer.

Now about "E":

"Hammer and Hoe offers new insights into the nature of the relationship, in the 1930s and 1940s, between the Communist Party and AA workers.

What "E" says implies that:
1) Popular front (decline) period is the main focus of the passage
I can't accept this idea no matter how I try:) If we embrace "new insights" idea, then "new insights" should refer to Third Period. Look at the structure of the passage:

P2. Most scholarship blah..blah...blah...While this is blah...blah...blah.... Kelley's interest is blah...blah...blah.
P3 Kelley's vision

2) Hammer and Hoe offers new insights into the nature...in 1930s and 1940s. So basically *new insights* refer to the *decline* idea. We have no clue from the passage that *decline* idea was new. It would be plausible if 2nd paragraph told us that Most scholarship has tended to see Popular Front period like a period when AA participation in CP increased or Most scholarships didn't pay attention to Popular Front period's ability to decrease AA participation.

But we have only this:

Most scholarship that has offered a defense (This part already confines all scholarships to scholarships that offered a defense) of Communist Party in 1930s and 1940s has tended to emphasize its attempts to draw on democratic political traditions, and to enter meaningful political alliances with liberal political forces.

This scholarships have nothing to do with relationship between Communist Party and AA.

1st paragraph also doesn't have any information that would suggest that *decline* idea was new. In order to infer anything about *new insights* we would need to make a HUGE assumption.

Resume:)
"D" is partially supported by the passage
"E" is not supported by the passage

This is how I see Q16. What do you think:)
Sorry for mistakes