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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How many years elapsed between the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama and the shootings at the Emanuel Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina?
(a) 64.
(b) 36.
(c) 41.
(d) 52.

2. When the author of the essay "Black and Blue" was warned by university officials to avoid walking in certain areas of the city, what threat does he mistakenly think he is being warned about?
(a) Wild animals.
(b) Police.
(c) Weather.
(d) Criminals.

3. What was the first OutKast album Kiese Laymon ever heard?
(a) Stankonia.
(b) Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.
(c) AtLliens.
(d) Aquemini.

4. The essay entitled "Black and Blue" takes its name from a song by what African-American musician?
(a) Muddy Waters.
(b) Fats Waller.
(c) Jelly Roll Morton.
(d) James Brown.

5. What musician does Kevin Young name as the most prominent example of a white person living as a black person?
(a) Johnny Otis.
(b) Bobby Darin.
(c) Rufus Wainwright.
(d) Little Richard.

Short Answer Questions

1. When Kevin Young states that being black is not a feeling and is not "simply a state of mind" (109), what does he say blackness is instead?

2. What song did President Barack Obama sing at the funeral for those killed in the Emanuel Mother Church massacre?

3. How many men does Mitchell Jackson name as belonging to his group of father figures?

4. The series of Know Your Rights murals were commissioned by a coalition of grassroots organizations called People's Justice for Community Control and what?

5. Which black female artist's work does Kiese Laymon set up as a counterpoint to the work of OutKast?

Short Essay Questions

1. What two categories does Kevin Young say white thinking or acting out about being black almost always fall into and what example does he give for each category he names?

2. How does Kevin Young, the author of the essay "Blacker Than Thou" support his point that similarities and solidarity among black people are more about culture than about physical appearances?

3. How does Emily Raboteau say she wishes to distinguish her role as a mother from both types of mothers depicted in the widely-circulated comic entitled "Still Two Americas"?

4. How is repetition employed within the poem "Queries of Unrest" and to what effect?

5. At the start of the essay "The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning," why do the two women talking about one's recent arrival of a son laugh when the new mother says her first thought had been how she could get her baby boy out of America?

6. How does the poem "Queries of Unrest" connect to the part of the collection that it opens, entitled Reckoning?

7. What contrast does the author of "Black and Blue" set up by using a quote from Fats Waller and a quote by Walt Whitman prior to the body of his essay?

8. What does the author of "Composite Pops" say that a boy must do if he is "not blessed with a father or gifted with a dynamic stand-in" (180)?

9. What does Garnette Cadogan mean when he writes that "the way home became home" (130) during his childhood in Jamaica?

10. What does Kevin Young identify as the main problem with Rachel Dolezal's claim of African ancestry?

(see the answer keys)

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