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Racial Awareness Quiz
8.5 x 11 inches, 30 pages, comb binding
The Racial Awareness Quiz (RAQ) is a discussion tool for classrooms, workshops and study groups. The quiz draws upon key facts in US history to raise awareness of false assumptions, typically conveyed by US education, in regard to racial structure and white culture in the US. The material is appropriate for people with a high school level education.
The quiz packet consists of:
- A 4-page looseleaf set of 20 multiple-choice questions
- An 8-page looseleaf set of answer sheets indicating the correct answer to each question and providing additional discussion
- A bound volume containing a set of question sheets, a set of answer sheets, and a facilitator’s guide to managing the quiz as a learning exercise
The quiz incorporates knowledge and experience gained from field testing in a several settings, including college classrooms and workshops. Typically it takes 20 to 30 minutes to answer the questions. The answer sheets take another 20 minutes to read. The quiz is intended to encourage dialog, and field testing indicates a period of 90 minutes to 2 hours should be allotted to discuss the answers.
Lifetime license
If you purchase the Racial Awareness Quiz, you are entitled to use it in any classroom, workshop, seminar, or discussion group setting where you are present as facilitator. You are entitled to make copies of the quiz questions and the quiz answers and make them available for use by participants during the event you facilitate. The facilitator's guide is for your personal use as facilitator and may not be duplicated. Participants may keep copies of the questions and answers in order to aid in their learning and retention, however they are not entitled to make new copies or to use the quiz on their own. This license does not give you the right to reprint the quiz as part of a publication or packet of material for sale, or as part of a workbook or set of supplemental readings.
Quiz questions
Sample question page (84.5 kB image)
The 20 multiple-choice questions of the quiz touch on United States history and, occasionally, current circumstances. The questions have been selected and written to explore assumptions about race that result from exposure to the typical Eurocentric education in United States high schools and mainstream media. Rather than exposing these assumptions directly, the questions ask about circumstances and then pose alternative answers, some of which "fit" existing assumptions. Quiz takers who use these assumptions find their answers are often wrong.
Some questions concentrate on significant historical events, such as Columbus discovering the Americas, the Indian Removal program of the 1830s, or the granting of independence by the U.S. to the Phillipines. Other questions focus on lesser matters. In each case, however, the assumptions that are being explored are significant. Exploring these assumptions that is the purpose of the quiz.
Quiz answers
Sample answer page (153 kB image)
The questions provide the interest and challenge of the RAQ, but the answers convey the learning. The answer sheets give the correct choice for each question along with an explanation between 150 to 500 words in length. Lively and engaging text presents supporting facts and documentation. Sources are cited in full following each answer, allowing quiz takers to check the answers on their own and locate material for additional reading.
Facilitator's guide
The facilitator's guide discusses aspects of quiz development and administration, based on our experiences during field tests.
Table of Contents of the facilitator's guide
- Overview
- Some Background
- Who Should Take the Quiz?
- Who Should Facilitate the Quiz?
- What Approach Should Be Used?
- Purpose of the Quiz, in Detail
- About Assumptions
- Issues and Concerns Raised During Field Tests
- Effects of the Quiz on Participants During Field Tests
- How I Would Explain the Need for This Exercise in Simple Terms to White Americans
- Frequently Asked Questions About the Center for the Study of White American Culture
- Bibliography
- General Discussion Questions
- Discussion of Individual Quiz Questions
Purpose of the Quiz - In Detail
The general purpose of the quiz is to raise awareness of assumptions, shaped by an Eurocentric system of education, that people have formed about white culture in the United States. However, it has several more specific purposes:
- Raise awareness about assumptions made by the dominant culture.
- Disrupt assumptions absorbed from the dominant culture. This can be uncomfortable and psychologically stressing to some people.
- Provide an opening to learning new assumptions that help decenter whiteness and promote development of multiracial structures.
- Sensitize people so that they might see that assumptions shape our stance, active or inactive, toward the racial structure of United States society.
- Raise an awareness of the need for accuracy and integrity in education on racial history in the United States.
- Serve as a teaching resource.
- Be non-threatening, interesting, fun.
- Create an "itch" as opposed to a "wound," and an openness to learning, not closure.
- Facilitate discussion and dialogue about white people and our role in a multiracial society.
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