Oppression has been No less Fatal to the Indian than to the Negro Race GMAT Reading Comprehension

Reading Passage Question

Oppression has been no less fatal to the Indian than to the Negro race, but its effects are different. Before the arrival of white men in the New World, the inhabitants of North America lived quietly in the woods, enduring the vicissitudes and practicing the virtues and vices common to the savage nations. The Europeans, having dispersed the Indian tribes and driven them into the deserts, condemned them to a wandering life, full of inexpressible sufferings.

Savage nations are only controlled by opinion and custom. When the North American Indians had lost the sentiment of attachment to their country; when their families were dispersed, their traditions obscured, and the chain of their recollections broken; when all their habits were changed, and their wants increased beyond measure, European tyranny rendered them more disorderly and less civilized than they were before. The moral and physical condition of these tribes grew worse, and they became more wretched. Nevertheless, the Europeans have not been able to change the character of the Indians; and though they have had the power to destroy, they have never been able to subdue and civilize them.

The lot of the Negro is placed on the extreme limit of servitude, while that of the Indian lies on the utmost verge of liberty; and slavery does not produce more fatal effects upon the first than independence upon the second. The Negro has lost all property in his own person, and he cannot dispose of his existence without committing a sort of fraud. But the savage is his own master as soon as he is able to act; parental authority is scarcely known to him; he has never bent his will to that of any of his kind, nor learned the difference between voluntary obedience and shameful subjection; and the very name of law is unknown to him. As he delights in this barbarous independence and would rather perish than sacrifice the least part of it, civilization has little hold over him.

The Negro makes a thousand fruitless efforts to insinuate himself among men who repulse him; he conforms to the taste of his oppressors, adopts their opinions, and hopes by imitating them to form a part of their community. Having been told from infancy that his race is naturally inferior to that of the whites, he ascents to the proposition and is ashamed of his own nature. In each of his features, he discovers a trace of slavery, and if it were in his power, he would willingly rid himself of everything that makes him what he is.

The Indian, on the contrary has his imagination inflated with the pretended nobility of his origin, and lives and dies in the midst of these dreams of pride. Far from desiring to conform his habits to ours, he loves his savage life as the distinguishing mark of his race and repels every advance to civilization, less, perhaps, from hatred of it than from a dread of resembling the Europeans.

While he has nothing to oppose to our perfection in the arts but the resources of the wilderness, to our tactics nothing but undisciplined, while our well-digested plans are met only by spontaneous instincts of savage life, who can wonder if he fails in this unequal contest?

The Negro, who earnestly desires to mingle his race with that of the European, cannot do so, while the Indian, who might succeed to a certain extent, disclaims to make the attempt. The servility of the one dooms him to slavery, the pride of the other to death.

“Oppression has been No less Fatal to the Indian than to the Negro Race” - is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates must have a solid grip on English GMAT reading comprehension. There are 4 multiple-choice questions in the above GMAT Reading Comprehension passages. GMAT Reading Comprehension Questions are delineated to evaluate candidates’ abilities to analyze and be conceptual for the answers. Candidates can brace up and take preparation by answering GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation:

Question 1. As inferred from the passage, the Negro

(a) though born a slave was still happy in his life of servitude
(b) had no greater aspiration than to be accepted by the Europeans
(c) sought to imitate his master in order to secure his freedom
(d) has been brainwashed into believing his concomitant subordination
(e) had no pride in his individuality or identity as he was ignorant of his history

Question 2. Which of the following is not in line with the author's comparison of the Negro and the Indian?

(a) Both suffered tyranny that though different originated from the same author
(b) While the one became servile, the other refused to bow even at the cost of his own life
(c) While the one admired his oppressor and sought to be like him, the other spurned civilization
(d) While oppression caused one to despise himself, it could not quell the fierce pride of the other
(e) The differences in their attitudes helped to save one and became fatal to the other

Question 3. According to the author, all of the following were the effects of European despotism on the Indians EXCEPT

(a) The bond that held them together was broken and they become isolated
(b) They became more unruly and barbaric as the glue of custom and tradition was lost
(c) They were forced into submission by the need to get their basic requirements
(d) They were forced to roam around in inhospitable terrain facing a lot of hardship
(e) As their habits were changed, they began to desire new things that they could not afford

Question 4. Regarding the conflict between the Europeans and the Indians, the author opines that

(a) it was an unequal match, tilted heavily against the Indians
(b) if the Indiand had been a little more like the Negros, then peace would have prevailed in the continent
(c) all efforts taken by the Whites to bridge the gap was rejected by the Indians
(d) the Indians hated the Europeans and refused to have anything to do with them
(e) the only admirable quality in the Indian was his refusal to bow down in the face of adversity

Question 5. The passage

(a) is critical of the Europeans for the misery they inflicted on the other races
(b) delineates how the future of a race is determined by its historical past
(c) analyzes the history of the U.S. to account for the condition of the races as it is today
(d) examines dispassionately the relationship between three major races in the U.S. in a historical context
(e) seeks to account for the emergence of the whites as the dominant race in the U.S

Question 6. Which of the following points to the irony of the race relations as depicted by the author?

(a) Neither the extreme submissiveness of one, nor the fierce independence of the other benefited them
(b) Both the desire to please and the desire to oppose was doomed
(c) The one who sought to ingratiate was repulsed while the one who spurned was sought after
(d) One accepted slavery as an attendant of birth, the other loved freedom more than his life
(e) The one who wanted to identify with the rulers could not do so while the other who could have, did not want to do so.

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