Om huis.
3. What argument is Douglass making when he says. "You close your colleges and seminaries against us, and then ask why we don't know more"? Support your answer with evidence from the text.

the speech this question is referring to is president kennedy's special message to the congress on urgent national needs, may 25, 1961

kennedy responds in a very direct and concrete way to those thinking that communism is a positive system:

"yet their aggression is more often concealed than open. they have fired no missiles; and their troops are seldom seen. they send arms, agitators, aid, technicians and propaganda to every troubled area. but where fighting is required, it is usually done by others--by guerrillas striking at night, by assassins striking alone--assassins who have taken the lives of four thousand civil officers in the last twelve months in vietnam alone--by subversives and saboteurs and insurrectionists, who in some cases control whole areas inside of independent nations." (kennedy)

president kennedy presents communism as cowardly, as a hidden and treacherous weapon that strikes from the shadows like thieves, he represents the system as not even being capable of showing and open and overt attack or confrontation. to finish up the response, he expresses that the system attacks even a country's idependence and freedom.

the significance of the title, "the passing", is related to the fact that the main characters, who are three african-american descendant women, are passing as white. this means that, because of their light-coloured skins they look like white women. one of the three friends, clare, is married to a white man and she lives in a white community and she has never told her husband that she is black. the title can easily be connected to the idea of pretending to be someone you are not and of losing your real identity in order to be accepted by society.