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Passage 40

   Joseph Glarthaar's Forged in Battle is not the first excel-
  lent study of Black soldiers and their White officers in the
  Civil War, but it uses more soldiers' letters and diaries—
  including rare material from Black soldiers—and concen-
(5) rates more intensely on Black-White relations in Black
  regiments than do any of its predecessors. Glathaar's title
  expresses his thesis: loyalty, friendship, and respect among
  White officers and Black soldiers were fostered by the
  mutual dangers they faced in combat.
(10 ) Glarthaar accurately describes the government's discrim-
  inatory treatment of Black soldiers in pay, promotion, medi-
  cal care, and job assignments, appropriately emphasizing
  the campaign by Black soldiers and their officers to get the
   opportunity to fight. That chance remained limited through
(15) out the war by army policies that kept most Black units
   serving in rear-echelon assignments and working in labor
   battalions. Thus, while their combat death rate was only
   one-third that of White units, their mortality rate from
   disease, a major killer in his war, was twice as great.
(20) Despite these obstacles, the courage and effectiveness of
   several Black units in combat won increasing respect from
   initially skeptical or hostile White soldiers. As one White
   officer put it, "they have fought their way into the respect
of all the army."
(25) In trying to demonstrate the magnitude of this attitudi-
  nal change, however, Glarthaar seems to exaggerate the
  prewar racism of the White men who became officers in
  Black regiments. "Prior to the war," he writes of these
 men, "virtually all of them held powerful racial prejudices."
(30) While perhaps true of those officers who joined Black
  units for promotion or other self-serving motives, this state-
    ment misrepresents the attitudes of the many abolitionists
    who became officers in Black regiments. Having spent
    years fighting against the race prejudice endemic in Ameri-
(35)  can society; they participated eagerly in this military exper-
    iment, which they hoped would help African Americans
 achieve freedom and postwar civil equality. By current
standards of racial egalitarianism, these men's paternalism
toward African Americans was racist. But to call their
(40)  feelings "powerful racial prejudices" is to indulge in
generational chauvinism—to judge past eras by present
standards.

1. The passage as a whole can best be characterized as which of
  the following?
  (A) An evaluation of a scholarly study
  (B) A description of an attitudinal change
  (C) A discussion of an analytical defect
  (D) An analysis of the causes of a phenomenon
  (E) An argument in favor of revising a view

2. According to the author, which of the following is true of
  Glarthaar's Forged in Battle compared with previous studies
  on the same topic?
  (A) It is more reliable and presents a more complete picture
     of the historical events on which it concentrates than do
     previous studies.
  (B) It uses more of a particular kind of source material and
     focuses more closely on a particular aspect of the topic
     than do previous studies.
  (C) It contains some unsupported generalizations, but it
     rightly emphasizes a theme ignored by most previous
     studies.
  (D) It surpasses previous studies on the same topic in that it
     accurately describes conditions often neglected by those
     studies.
  (E) It makes skillful use of supporting evidence to illustrate a
     subtle trend that previous studies have failed to detect.

3. The author implies that the title of Glatthaar's book refers
  specifically to which of the following?
  (A) The sense of pride and accomplishment that Black
      soldiers increasingly felt as a result of their Civil War
      experiences
  (B) The civil equality that African Americans achieved after
     the Civil War, partly as a result of their use of
     organizational skills honed by combat
  (C) The changes in discriminatory army policies that were
      made as a direct result of the performance of Black
      combat units during the Civil War
  (D) The improved interracial relations that were formed by
      the races' facing of common dangers and their waging
      of a common fight during the Civil War
  (E) The standards of racial egalitarianism that came to be
     adopted as a result of White Civil War veterans'
     repudiation of the previous racism

4. The passage mentions which of the following as an
  important theme that receives special emphasis in
  Glarthaar's book?
  (A) The attitudes of abolitionist officers in Black units
  (B) The struggle of Black units to get combat assignments
  (C) The consequences of the poor medical care received by
     Black soldiers
  (D) The motives of officers serving in Black units
  (E) The discrimination that Black soldiers faced when trying
      for promotions

5. The passage suggests that which of the following was true of
  Black units' disease mortality rates in the Civil War?
  (A) They were almost as high as the combat mortality rates
      of White units.
  (B) They resulted in part from the relative inexperience of
      these units when in combat.
  (C) They were especially high because of the nature of these
     units' usual duty assignments.
  (D) They resulted in extremely high overall casualty rates in
     Black combat units.
  (E) They exacerbated the morale problems that were caused
     by the army's discriminatory policies.

6. The author of the passage quotes the White officer in lines
  23-24 primarily in order to provide evidence to support the
  contention that
  (A) virtually all White officers initially had hostile attitudes
      toward Black soldiers
  (B) Black soldiers were often forced to defend themselves
     from physical attacks initiated by soldiers from White
     units
  (C) the combat performance of Black units changed the
     attitudes of White soldiers toward Black soldiers
  (D) White units paid especially careful attention to the
     performance of Black units in battle
  (E) respect in the army as a whole was accorded only to
     those units, whether Black or White, that performed well
     in battle

7. Which of the following best describes the kind of error
  attributed to Glarthaar in lines 25-28?
  (A) Insisting on an unwarranted distinction between two 
     groups of individuals in order to render an argument
     concerning them internally consistent
  (B) Supporting an argument in favor of a given interpretation
     of a situation with evidence that is not particularly
     relevant to the situation
  (C) Presenting a distorted view of the motives of certain
     individuals in order to provide grounds for a negative
     evaluation of their actions
  (D) Describing the conditions prevailing before a given
     event in such a way that the contrast with those
     prevailing after the event appears more striking than it
     actually is
  (E) Asserting that a given event is caused by another event
     merely because the other event occurred before the given
     event occurred

8. Which of the following actions can best be described as
  indulging in "generational chauvinism" (lines 40-41) as that
  practice is defined in the passage?
  (A) Condemning a present-day monarch merely because  
     many monarchs have been tyrannical in the past.
  (B) Clinging to the formal standards of politeness common
     in one's youth to such a degree that any relaxation of
     those standards is intolerable
  (C) Questioning the accuracy of a report written by an
     employee merely because of the employee's gender.
  (D) Deriding the superstitions accepted as "science" in past
     eras without acknowledging the prevalence of irrational
     beliefs today.
  (E) Labeling a nineteenth-century politician as "corrupt"
   for engaging in once-acceptable practices considered
     intolerable today.

Материал подготовила Ольга Парикова,

GMAT-консультант компании MBA Strategy