Harvard students fail literacy test

[packman]

Hard to believe this was in effect in Louisiana only 50 years ago. Here Harvard students struggle with the test, where one wrong answer would bar you from voting. I would love to see the test itself if someone has a site that has it:

[Jim__]

1. Here's a link to a Louisiana literacy test (circa 1964)

http://www.crmvet.org/info/la-littest.pdf

[ZombieHorde]

2. Here is the test.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_rights_and_the_supreme_court_the_impossible_literacy_test_louisiana.html

[Barack_America]

3. 30 questions in 10 minutes? #30 isn't even a complete sentence.

5 circles that what a "common interlocking part"? Contain?

[ZombieHorde]

4. You're right.

Question 30 is a drunk text.

[scarystuffyo]

6. 5 circles in a row with a line through all of them ?

[Scootaloo]

26. That's because the test isn't written to be passable

It's written to have murky solutions and answers that could get you disqualified ven if you got them "right"

For instance, some questions say "draw a circle around this word" - other say "draw a line around this word." Now, of course drawing a circle is also drawing a line, but the people behind the test could point to this and say you had failed that question as it says todraw a line, not a circle.

The idea is to forge a test that has answerable questions, but to leave those answers open enough to interpretation to allow people to be disqualified even if they succeeded on all of the questions. becuase these tests were there to disenfranchise black voters, not to prove literacy.

[treestar]

5. Are the answers anywhere?

I don't get number one. And a couple have bad grammar in them, so they make the question nonsensical.

[sarisataka]

8. The bad grammar isn't nonsense

In several cases it allows the question to be "interpreted" so there is more than one answer. It allows anyone to be disqualified by claiming a different answer was the correct one.

[Orrex]

12. ^^That

[malaise]

29. Unfuckingbelievable

Damn!

[trusty elf]

13. The only thing that makes sense

is that it's the first sentence. So you would have to draw a line around the number "1". But wtf is "drawing a line around" it? Is that something other than circling it? It could be a spiral!

I bet the ole' boys who came up with this shite thought it was real funny.

[treestar]

17. that too. A line around is illogical in itself.

since a line in the geometry sense never meets itself, right?



And the sentence has a number. It cannot be said to have "a" letter. So they let the person who can't tell numbers from letters get it right, if they think "1" is a letter.

[niyad]

10. I wonder how many pukes could pass that test?

[treestar]

18. 25 is devious

you might not put two "the"

[ZombieHorde]

19. Yes it is.

The test is obviously meant to be failed.

[trusty elf]

21. Judging by all of the mistakes in this ridiculous test,

I bet the clowns who wrote it didn't notice that "the" was written twice.

[Drunken Irishman]

24. It took me reading your comment to see the extra the.

Jesus.

[awoke_in_2003]

31. I missed that one alright...

what got me was "spell backwards, forwards"

[LeftInTX]

23. They should make Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy and Alito pass this test

No Supreme Court for you!!!

[Warpy]

30. Most of those questions have nothing to do with literacy

but I suppose that was the purpose of that test, trying to fail people on "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?" sort of questions.

[scarystuffyo]

7. Did all the people have to take this test? White and Black?

[treestar]

9. The article says just black people

Which shows how disgustingly blatant they really were. It was only to prove that blacks were "illiterate" and whites were assumed to be. Pure racism in its obvious form.

[jtuck004]

11. They weren't out to prove them illiterate, because many were. They were out to prove they weren't

whole people, like the Constitution in this country established for White Freedom said..

[treestar]

16. Yes though a literate person could get one wrong

and there were plenty of white illiterates there I bet.

[jtuck004]

25. Absolutely. It was just to weed out the people they wanted to deny freedom to.

And in that respect, it hasn't changed.

[Jim Lane]

32. There was also the "grandfathering" ruse.

One method during the Jim Crow era was to impose impossible standards for voting, but to allow an exception -- you could register and vote if your grandfather was a registered voter. This of course excluded the descendants of slaves but allowed illiterate whites to vote.

It's from this practice that we now have "grandfathering" as a generic term for allowing pre-existing rights to continue despite a new rule to the contrary. For example, when a factory can keep operating even after the zoning in the area is changed to residential, we say that the nonconforming use is grandfathered in.

[treestar]

33. thanks, that's interesting

I have used that term or heard it used in the legal context. Never knew its origin.

[Thirties Child]

14. I voted in Louisiana in 1960

What I remember when I registered to vote is being asked something simple, I think my mother's maiden name, and the black man standing next to me, a complicated question about the constitution. If this test was around then, I obviously don't remember correctly. What stands out for me is the difference between what he was asked and what I was asked. I registered. He didn't.

[Helen Borg]

15. 20 sec per item, folks!

No fooling around! Get cracking!

[rock]

20. This test plays on a (not so subtle) fact.

English is neither a formal nor technical language - like all human natural languages. Contrast with (say) Pascal.

[trusty elf]

22. So much bullshit.....

like number 28:

"Divide a vertical line in two equal parts by bisecting it with a curved horizontal line that is only straight at its spot bisection of the vertical."

Say what?

"a curved line that is only straight at its spot bisection of the vertical. "

Dafuq does that mean? The intersection of two lines is a point, so how can a curved line be "straight" at its "spot bisection"?

The more I look at this, the more I form of an image of the racist dumbfucks who thought that they were being so clever in devising this crap.

[Kalidurga]

27. Draw a line around a what?

I couldn't get any further than that.

[surrealAmerican]

28. Are there any records of people passing this test?

It seems to have been designed to insure a 100% failure rate, which, I guess, was the point, but I wonder if they did keep records of how many people took this test, and which questions they got right or wrong.