A Marxist sociologist has argued that racism stems from the class struggle that is unique to the capitalist system—that racial prejudice is generated by capitalists as a means of controlling workers. His thesis works relatively well when applied to discrimination against Blacks in the United States, but his definition of racial prejudice as “racially-based negative prejudgments against a group generally accepted as a race in any given region of ethnic competition,” can be interpreted as also including hostility toward such ethnic groups as the Chinese in California and the Jews in medieval Europe. However, since prejudice against these latter peoples was not inspired by capitalists, he has to reason that such antagonisms were not really based on race. He disposes thusly (albeit unconvincingly) of both the intolerance faced by Jews before the rise of capitalism and the early twentieth-century discrimination against Oriental people in California, which, inconveniently, was instigated by workers

Q5. The passage supplies information that would answer which of the following questions?

(a) What accounts for the prejudice against the Jews in medieval Europe?

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(b) What conditions caused the discrimination against Oriental people in California in the early twentieth century?

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(d) What evidence did the Marxist sociologist provide to support his thesis?

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Solution

The correct option is C
(c) What explanation did the Marxist sociologist give for the existence of racial prejudice?

The passage does not provide any evidence to the Marxist sociologist’s claims. Hence Option (d) is incorrect. The Marxist sociologist explained that racial prejudice is generated by capitalists as a means of controlling workers. Option (a) is incorrect as the passage does not answer this question (refer to the last sentence).

Option (b) is incorrect as the passage just mentions that the discrimination against Oriental people in California was instigated by workers but does not provide any information regarding the conditions that cause this discrimination.

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Similar questions

Q. Read the following passage and answer the (four) items that follow:
A Marxist sociologist has argued that racism stems from the class struggle that is unique to the capitalist system—that racial prejudice is generated by capitalists as a means of controlling workers. His thesis works relatively well when applied to discrimination against Blacks in the United States, but his definition of racial prejudice as “racially-based negative prejudgments against a group generally accepted as a race in any given region of ethnic competition,” can be interpreted as also including hostility toward such ethnic groups as the Chinese in California and the Jews in medieval Europe. However, since prejudice against these latter peoples was not inspired by capitalists, he has to reason that such antagonisms were not really based on race. He disposes thusly (albeit unconvincingly) of both the intolerance faced by Jews before the rise of capitalism and the early twentieth-century discrimination against Oriental people in California, which, inconveniently, was instigated by workers

The passage supplies information that would answer which of the following questions?

Q. Read the following passage and answer the (four) items that follow:
A Marxist sociologist has argued that racism stems from the class struggle that is unique to the capitalist system—that racial prejudice is generated by capitalists as a means of controlling workers. His thesis works relatively well when applied to discrimination against Blacks in the United States, but his definition of racial prejudice as “racially-based negative prejudgments against a group generally accepted as a race in any given region of ethnic competition,” can be interpreted as also including hostility toward such ethnic groups as the Chinese in California and the Jews in medieval Europe. However, since prejudice against these latter peoples was not inspired by capitalists, he has to reason that such antagonisms were not really based on race. He disposes thusly (albeit unconvincingly) of both the intolerance faced by Jews before the rise of capitalism and the early twentieth-century discrimination against Oriental people in California, which, inconveniently, was instigated by workers.

According to the passage, the Marxist sociologist’s chain of reasoning required him to assert that prejudice toward Oriental people in California was:

Q. In Forces of Production, David Noble examines the transformation of the machine-tool industry as the industry moved from reliance on skilled artisans to automation. Noble writes from a Marxist perspective, and his central argument is that management, in its decisions to automate, conspired against labor: the power that the skilled machinists wielded in the industry was intolerable to management. Noble fails to substantiate this claim,
although his argument is impressive when he applies the Marxist concept of “de-skilling”—the use of technology to replace skilled labor—to the automation of the machine-tool industry. In automating, the industry moved to computer-based, digitized “numerical-control” (N/C) technology, rather than to artisan-generated “record-playback” (R/P) technology. Although both systems reduced reliance on skilled labor, Noble clearly prefers R/P, with its inherent acknowledgment of workers’ skills: unlike N/C, its programs were produced not by engineers at their computers, but by skilled machinists, who recorded their own movements to “teach” machines to duplicate those movements. However, Noble’s only evidence of conspiracy is that, although the two approaches were roughly equal in technical merit, management chose N/C. From this he concludes that automation is undertaken not because efficiency demands it or scientific advances allow it, but because it is a tool in the ceaseless war of capitalists against labor.
Q. The author of the passage is primarily concerned with

Read the following passage & answer the following questions:

When A. Philip Randolph assumed the leadership of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, he began a ten-year battle to win recognition from the Pullman Company, the largest private employer of Black people in the United States and the company that controlled the railroad industry’s sleeping car and parlor service. (*)In 1935 the Brotherhood became the first Black union recognized by a major corporation. Randolph’s efforts in the battle helped transform the attitude of Black workers towards unions and towards themselves as an identifiable group; eventually, Randolph helped to weaken organized labor’s antagonism towards Black workers.

In the Pullman contest, Randolph faced formidable obstacles. (**)The first was Black workers’ understandable skepticism toward unions, which had historically barred Black workers from membership. An additional obstacle was the union that Pullman itself had formed, which weakened support among Black workers for an independent entity.

The Brotherhood possessed a number of advantages, however, including Randolph’s own tactical abilities. In 1928 he took the bold step of threatening a strike against Pullman. Such a threat, on a national scale, under Black leadership, helped replace the stereotype of the Black worker as a servant with the image of the Black worker as a wage earner. In addition, the porters’ very isolation aided the Brotherhood. Porters were scattered throughout the country, sleeping in dormitories in Black communities; their segregated life protected the union’s internal communications from interception. That the porters were a homogeneous group working for a single employer with single labor policy, thus sharing the same grievances from city to city, also strengthened the Brotherhood and encouraged racial identity and solidarity as well. But it was only in the early 1930’s that federal legislation prohibiting a company from maintaining its own unions with company money eventually allowed the Brotherhood to become recognized as the porters’ representative.

Not content with this triumph, Randolph brought the Brotherhood into the American Federation of Labor, where it became the equal of the Federation’s 105 other unions. He reasoned that as a member union, the Brotherhood would be in a better position to exert pressure on member unions that practiced race restrictions. Such restrictions were eventually found unconstitutional in 1944.

The passage suggests that if the grievances of porters in one part of the United Stated had been different from those of porters in another part of the country, which of the following would have been the case?

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