問題詳情

四、閱讀測驗【請在下列各題中選出最適當的答案】    Contemporary scholars agree that “race” was essentially a folk idea, not a product of scientific research and discovery.Since the 1940s when Ashley Montagu argued against the use of the term “race” in science, a growing number of scholars inmany disciplines have declared that the real meaning of race has to do with social realities, quite distinct from physicalvariations in the human species.    Race and its ideology about human differences arose out of the context of African slavery. But many peoples throughouthistory have been enslaved without the imposition of racial ideology. The first people that the English tried to enslave andplace on plantations were the Irish with whom they had had hostile relations since the 13th century. In the later part of the 17thcentury the demand for labor grew enormously. It had become clear that Irishmen did not make good slaves. More than that,the real threats to social order were the poor freed whites who demanded lands and privileges that the upper class colonialgovernments refused. Some colonial leaders turned to African labor for a buffer against the masses of poor whites.   Until the 18th century the image of Africans was generally positive. But in order for the colonists to transform AfricanAmericans into their property, they minimized those qualities that make their slaves human. The rise of a powerful antislaverymovement both in Europe and in the United States posed threats. As a consequence, proslavery forces found it necessary todevelop new arguments for defending the institution. Focusing on physical differences, they turned to the notion of the naturalinferiority of Africans and thus their God-given suitability for slavery. Such arguments became more frequent and stridentfrom the end of the 18th century on, and the characterizations of Africans became more negative. It was not until 1857 whenU.S. Chief Justice Roger Taney legitimized slavery only for Africans and their descendants that the concept of race wascodified in laws.    Today anthropologists claim that “race” has no intrinsic relationship to human biological diversity and “race” is a socialinvention. The race concept beginning in the 18th century became a problematic worldview, a set of culturally createdattitudes and beliefs about human group differences.
46. What is the passage mainly about?
(A) The evolution of a human concept.
(B) The scientific foundation of a research.
(C) The codification procedures of slavery.
(D) The contributions of modern anthropology.

參考答案

答案：A
難度：適中0.5
統計：A(1),B(0),C(1),D(0),E(0)

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