this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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Could he 0ass the test? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by zjti8eit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] wander1236@sh.itjust.works 38 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Seeing as the quoted post is from Matt Walsh, I'm a little concerned about what would end up in his definition of an 8th grade civics exam.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 50 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

(That's page 1 of 3, BTW, just in case anybody thought the 10-minute time limit sounded easy.)

[–] Broadfern@lemmy.world 33 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is one of the tests they used to disenfranchise black voters before, isn’t it?

Matt Walsh is a racist POS.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago

Yep.

[–] Asetru@feddit.org 22 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

I mean... I'm not a native English speaker, so maybe that's why I'm having a hard time here? But there's just too many things that throw me off completely.

  • "Draw a line around"... How would anything I draw "around" something still be a line? Shouldn't a line be straight?
  • "Draw a line around the number or letter of this sentence."... There's no number in that sentence but lots of letters. I'm literally lost in the first question. Or does that refer to the number that comes before that sentence?
  • "write the last letter of the first word beginning with 'L'"... For some reason, this in particular doesn't limit it to "this line", so I was utterly unsure if I was supposed to find the first word on the line, the page, or get a dictionary and find the first L-word there.
  • "Cross out the number necessary, when making the number below one million"... Wat? Like, is this referring to the number being below the written line on the paper and it should be exactly one million or is this just saying the number should be anything below one million? Also, there's just one number there, so crossing that out leaves me with nothing, so I'll just assume I should cross out a digit? Then again, I can't cross out a single digit for the number to become exactly one million, so this is something I really don't get.
[–] nickhammes@lemmy.world 32 points 2 weeks ago

No, it's tricky for native English speakers too, and that's the point. It's a literacy test that was given to black people in Louisiana in order to justify taking away their right to vote

[–] grue@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's intentionally ambiguous so that the officials administering it always have an excuse to fail you if they don't like the look of you (i.e. you're not white).

[–] HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago

Wasn't this except for white peiple because of the grandfather clause?

[–] Cavemanfreak@programming.dev 15 points 2 weeks ago

The confusion was the point. It was used as a test to disenfranchise black voters 🙃

[–] DagwoodIII@piefed.social 11 points 2 weeks ago

It was literally designed to keep Black people from voting.

It's not supposed to be passable.

[–] Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 weeks ago

I had the exact same comments. The fifth one mentions drawing a circle so they do know what that is as opposed to a line around something. The first question is just nonsensical to me.

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

3 pages of this? I'd say it's a test designed to fail people with ADHD

[–] 73QjabParc34Vebq@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 points 2 weeks ago

And dyslexic people

[–] JayGray91@piefed.social 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

maybe it's my ESL, but draw a line around…?

is that circling something?

Question 5 says circling though…

[–] grue@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago

It's intentionally ambiguous so that the officials administering it always have an excuse to fail you if they don't like the look of you (i.e. you're not white).

[–] arudesalad@piefed.ca 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

In my gcse class my teacher made us do this test when we were studying civil rights. No one passed it.

Iirc, when it asks you to draw a line around something you fail the question if you draw a circle around it.

That's how deliberately impossible these tests were. No one can pass it without looking at the answers first.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 4 points 2 weeks ago

I would love to have some contemporary material discussing this, like the officials who designed it, or the campaigners trying to get rid of it