Words in Context SAT question

Choice A is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of Sterlin Harjo’s approach to representing Native characters on television. As used in this context, “repudiates” means rejects or refuses to have anything to do with. The text indicates that television shows tend to depict Native characters as living long ago, but that Harjo’s series Reservation Dogs focuses on Native teenagers in the present day, representing a “rejection” of the typical approach to depicting Native characters. This context thus indicates that Harjo repudiates television’s general tendency regarding Native characters. 

Choice B is incorrect because the text describes Harjo’s “rejection” of the typical approach to representing Native characters on television, so it wouldn’t make sense to say that Harjo “proclaims,” or declares or affirms, television’s general tendency regarding Native characters. Harjo is described as refusing to follow the pattern of depicting Native characters in the distant past, not as proclaiming that pattern. Choice C is incorrect because the text describes television’s tendency to represent Native characters in the distant past as something that is already occurring, not as something that Harjo “foretells,” or predicts will happen in the future. The text is focused on Harjo’s “rejection” of this pattern, not on any predictions he may have about it. Choice D is incorrect because saying that Harjo “recants” something would mean that he withdraws a previously held belief, and it wouldn’t make sense to say that Harjo recants television’s tendency to represent Native characters as living in the past. No beliefs previously held by Harjo are mentioned. Additionally, a tendency isn’t a belief and thus isn’t something that can be recanted.