GMAT阅读资料第40篇

文章作者 100test 发表时间 2007:03:25 21:39:14
来源 100Test.Com百考试题网

　　Joseph Glarthaars 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. Glathaars 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 governments 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 mens 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 Glarthaars 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.