Can You Answer These 10 Questions About America?
A New Exhibit in New York City Asks the Ultimate Question for July 4th
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My family has a saying when we play trivia games: No number questions! Well, this year’s Whitney Biennial exhibition in New York City has one of the more provocative number questions I've seen in recent memory.
Can You Answer These 10 Questions About America?
This query comes from Lebanese artist Rayyane Tabet, who has filled all corners of the Whitney Musem of American Art with questions from the U.S. naturalization test. The project, entitled 100 Civics Questions, includes instillations, assorted videos, and an ongoing social media campaign. It arrives at a time when the definition of what it means to be American is the subect of widespread debate.
Tabet, who is himself applying for citizenship, examines the changing definition of citizen. As he explains in this introduction on the Whitney website,
The test requires being able to answer correctly six out of one hundred questions about American government, history, and geography and read and write one out of three sentences in English. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services provides study guides for these exams. While looking through those study guides, I realized that if these questions and phrases were taken out of context and disseminated throughout the space of the museum and across the website, they could be read like concrete poetry or open-ended, contradictory, and often hermetic questions.
As critic Kerr Houston writes on the website Bmore Art, “Encountered in a stairwell, the question What did the Emancipation Proclamation do? seems both rudely confrontational and wildly unanswerable.”
Houston goes on to say that Tabet’s piece offers potent lens through which to consider the unfolding present, specifically the question, What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
The way in which the questions pop up throughout the Whitney conveys a provocative indifference to standard geographies. If boundaries are merely conventional, and seemingly fundamental questions about national identity turn out to be gnomic, what might it actually mean to be American?
Taken from the long list of questions on the natrualization exam, these ten questions are the ones the Whitney has chosen to highlight. Can you answer them? [I've included the answers in the bottom of this post.]
1. What is the name of the national anthem?
2. Name one problem that led to the Civil War.
3. What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?
4. What is the rule of law?
5. What is the supreme law of the land?
6. Who did the United States fight in World War II?
7. What movement tried to end racial discrimination?
8. What is the economic system of the United States?
9. What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?
10. What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
Happy July 4th, everyone. Here’s to robust conversations, no number questions, and a season of coming together.
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You might enjoy reading these posts:
Don’t Be Happy: Why a Meaningful Life Is More Important Than a Happy One
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A Letter to My Dad on My First Fatherless Father’s Day
Or check out my books that inspired this newsletter: Life Is in the Transitions and The Secrets of Happy Families.
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In their guide to preparing for the naturalization test, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service says it is "aware that there may be additional correct answers to the 100 civics questions, applicants are encouraged to respond to the civics questions using the answers provided below." These are the answers given to the ten questions that the Whitney is highlighting:
1. The Star-Spangled Banner
2. ▪ slavery ▪ economic reasons ▪ states’ rights
3. ▪ freed the slaves ▪ freed slaves in the Confederacy ▪ freed slaves in the Confederate states ▪ freed slaves in most Southern states
4. ▪ Everyone must follow the law. ▪ Leaders must obey the law. ▪ Government must obey the law. ▪ No one is above the law.
5. The Constitution
6. Japan, Germany, and Italy
7. civil rights (movement)
8. ▪ capitalist economy ▪ market economy
9. ▪ serve on a jury ▪ vote in a federal election
10. ▪ checks and balances ▪ separation of powers
cover photo copyright JillWellington via Canva.