CRCB - Chapter 7

Summary

This chapter shows how inferences differ from facts. While facts are things that are known and verifiable, inferences go beyond facts by making conclusions from ideas and opinions that are not directly stated. We use inferences to understand the author’s reasons for writing, find similarities or differences in comparisons and understand the tone of a writing. Sometimes inferences are used to detect a writer’s biases by noticing emotive language that is not fact-based. Inferences are also used to fill in information gaps when the author assumes you understand motives and reasons. Implied main points require that the reader make inferences by identifying the topic asking what is the main point and combining the topic with the new information.

Exercises

1. Darden explains that when someone tells you your race, you never forget. What is he implying?

America should be colorblind.

2. What does Darden mean he says his grandfather receiving his calling from God?

The grandfather felt compelled to preach His Word more than work on the farm.

3. What effect on the family does Darden imply occurred when his grandfather became a preacher?

The family struggled financially and emotionally.

4. What does Darden imply when he says “which gives you an idea of the lack of shame with which my father will stretch a good story”?

His father was not embarrassed to embellish stories.

5. What does Darden imply when he says “He (his father) was nobody’s boy excerpt hers”?

His father always listened to Big Mama.

6. What does Darden imply when he says “It is important that we change from ‘Negroes’ to ‘blacks’ because of the deep need to find one’s self”?

Darden implies that if blacks do not define themselves, they will be defined by whites, and therefore, as slaves.

7. There is an information gap in the story about the author’s father earning his first nickel. What did the author mean when he said “When the time came”?

It was time for a bowel movement.

8. What does the author mean when says his father “can still pinch a nickel”?

Darden meant that his father is thrifty.

9. What are the author’s tone and purpose of this excerpt? Explain your answer.

Darden was explaining that people may need to look down on others in order to validate themselves, but that is not what you are.

10. Do you think that Darden’s father ever got out of poverty he associated with the South?

Regardless of how much he had, I believe he escaped poverty by moving on and attaining self-sufficiency.

11. What point is Darden making by telling you about his father’s life? What do you think he learned from his father’s experiences?

Darden wanted to show that one must control one’s own destiny regardless of circumstances. Darden learned that he must be defined on his own terms.