GRE Reading Comprehension

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Source: XDF

The fact that Black people in the English colonies of North America were never treated as the equals of White people has important ramifications. If from the outset Black people were discriminated against, then legal slavery in the 1660，s should be viewed as a reflection and an extension of racial prejudice rather than, as many historians including Oscar and Mary Handlin have argued, the cause of prejudice. In addition, the existence of discrimination before the advent of legal slavery offers a further explanation for the harsher treatment of Black slaves in North than in South America. Freyre and Tannenbaum have rightly argued that the lack of certain traditions in North America一such as a Roman conception of slavery and a Roman Catholic emphasis on equality一explains why the treatment of Black slaves was more severe there than in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of South America. But this cannot be the whole explanation since it is merely negative, based only on a lack of something. A more compelling explanation is that the early and sometimes extreme racial discrimination in the English colonies helped determine the particular nature of the slavery that followed.

Question List: 1 2 3

According to the passage, the Handlins have NOT argued which of the following about the relationship between racial prejudice and the institution of legal slavery in the English colonies of North America?

  • A Racial prejudice and the institution of slavery arose simultaneously.
  • B The source of racial prejudice was the institution of slavery.
  • C Although existing in a lesser form before the 1660's, racial prejudice increased sharply after slavery was legalized.

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