Legal Commentary

Multicultural Literacy Quiz

By Eugene Volokh

I think that in our multicultural time, all Americans should be able to answer some basic questions about various minority groups. Here are three that come to my mind:

1. In December, most African-Americans celebrate a winter holiday called __.

2. Most American Jews organize their lives around the __ calendar.

3. People in the 48 contiguous states who are descended from peoples who inhabited the Americas before the European conquest (but are not Hispanic) are most likely to prefer that their racial group be called __. [UPDATE: I added the parenthetical in response to Bumpjon?s comment, and the reality that many people do treat Hispanic as a racial designation, even though the census and many others view it as an ethnic one that could apply to people of any race.]

To see the answers, click on the ?Continue? link that immediately follows this line:

1. Christmas.

2. Gregorian.

3. American Indian (according to 1995 data; please let me know if you know of more recent data).

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on July 29, 2010 (boomark / email).