I’m starting to think maybe the College Board should never have removed the analogy section from the SAT. Younger readers won’t remember this, but once upon a time, it used to give people fits.
The analogy questions would present the test-taker with two things that were being related to each other — for instance, “cold is to ice cream” (written, cold:ice cream). Then you would be tasked with picking a second combination from among the answers, which was most akin to the first.
And I hated them, but I’m beginning to rethink my emotions on the matter.
I mean, I know they were often culture-bound and biased in favor of rich folks, with questions not about cold and ice cream, but rather, about boats and regattas. Yet, however unfair they might have been, if I hear one more white person analogize some minor inconvenience in their lives to the Holocaust, slavery, or lynching, I’m gonna be leading the charge to bring them back.
Because when someone asks: “COVID lockdowns are to public health as something is to something,” the answer is most assuredly not, “as gas chambers are to Treblinka.”
Likewise, if the question begins with, “Being banned from YouTube is to saying racist shit as something is to something,” you can rest assured, “as being hanged from a tree is to looking a white man in the eye” will not be the one you should pick.
That I need to explain this would be stunning if it weren’t so maddeningly typical.
Because apparently, perspective is to white America as nutrition is to candy corn.
Or to put it in Jeopardy terms: “What is, utterly lacking, Alex?”
It’s been a recurring theme amid the current pandemic.
As with Aryan Rage Barbie Tomi Lahren, who tweeted that compliance with social distancing measures was “starting to look a whole lot like willful slavery.” Absolutely, because agreeing to stand six feet from another person and wear a mask at Publix is very similar to presenting oneself at an auction block and begging Master William to buy you and separate your family.
