- Sun Jun 05, 2016 7:51 pm
#26178
Good Day Everyone,
If you don’t mind, I’d love to run my thoughts by you regarding bringing in outside information to strengthen an argument that relies on a concept that’s potentially outside of one’s body of knowledge.
Per the passage, the Negro Units did this:
1) Produced plays on African American subjects for primarily African American audiences.
2) They were national (18+ cities throughout the U.S.) and employed many people (100s of staff).
3) Defied racism and bureaucracy, overcame internal artistic and personal differences to do their work.
The author’s argument is that the Negro Units performed the above and came closer than any others before them to founding a truly national black theater.
What concerned me is that the term “a truly national black theater” is never defined by the author, though the three attributes listed above are echoed by Q5’s answer (B). Would it proper to assume that these three attributes are all necessary (but at the same time not sufficient) for an institution to be considered a “truly national black theater”?
The reason for my inquisitiveness is Q7’s answer choice (D). In “Strengthen” questions, we are allowed to pick an answer choice containing “new” or ”outside” information, even if that information has not been previously mentioned in the passage. I wondered: if a supposed “truly national black theater” could not manage to attract a large audience to their productions, could they still be worthy of being given such a grand title?
I realize we could disqualify (D) simply because we don’t know if a 100 people is a lot or a little for a theater audience in the 1930s. But if you could humor me, let’s imagine (D) said that “Every African American theater founded prior to the Negro Units could only get very few audience members to show up at their productions”. Would such version of (D) strengthen the author’s argument?
Or would such an answer choice still be incorrect because the term a “truly national black theater” is considered to be so outside of a general domain of knowledge that all “New Information” answers (such as the ones based on the attendance numbers) are automatically invalid despite this being a “Strengthen” question?
My thoughts on the rest of the answer choices:
(A) Weakens the argument because it shows that black theater groups with the same mission as the Negro Units existed before them.
(B) Slightly strengthens the argument, thus a contender. Yes, it’s still possible to have a theater without government funding, yet the lack of such funding would make creating such a theater harder and thus less likely to occur.
(D) Inconclusive – we don’t know if 100 people is a little or a lot. Also potentially relies on information that falls outside the definition of what constitutes a “truly national black theater”.
(E) Inconclusive or perhaps slightly strengthens the argument. The lack of historical records doesn’t prove an event did not happen but the absence of records does suggest that it is less likely that a truly “national” (located in many cities across the country, employing many people) black theater existed prior to the Negro Units. On the other hand, “had difficulty locating” can be interpreted as just saying that the task of locating the documents was hard while not telling us if it was ultimately successful.
(C) Strengthens the argument big time because it shows that theaters existing before the Negro Units were not national. This is the correct answer because it attacks the notion that someone else had created a “truly national black theater” first.
Thank you,
Alex
