#21 - Which one of the following phrases

[bli2016]

Hi, I chose A for this question because the passage says that they reconstructed the past for the purposes of overturning degrading representations of blackness. Is it because the first part of the sentence insinuates that they may have done it unintentionally (I'm assuming that "correcting a misconception" requires a deliberate intention)?

[Adam Tyson]

I think you have a point there about intention, bli2016, and it's part of why I don't like answer A here. Another problem I have with it is the idea that the "reconstruction" does something to correct a misconception. What misconception? Is the author saying that the African past was glorious, but that historians had failed to recognize that? I don't get that from the passage. It seems instead like the author recognizes that African-Americans were disconnected from their African heritage, and they set about to create an idea of a collective culture that may not have actually existed (because in fact their heritage came from a mixture of cultures and languages). The author later called the idea of this common culture "mythical", and earlier he said the historians were engaged in a sort of "nation building". They were, in other words, making things up to drum up support for a particular viewpoint. That's not correcting a misconception, but creating a whole new idea. That's what makes E so much better in this case.

Let us know if that helps clear things up for you.