The
Bell Curve may serve many purposes for people with a right-wing ax to grind.
With this information in mind, and with so many reputable anthropologists and scientists distancing themselves from the arguments in The
Bell Curve, the contention of Murray and Herrnstein is inconclusive at best.
Trying to build it on The
Bell Curve would be like trying to make policy on the basis of Olympics results or winners of piano competitions.
Conservatives, however, use The
Bell Curve to support their belief that those who live in squalour and poverty have no one to blame but themselves.
Again that is, when one realizes how little originality can be found in either of the foundational theses of the The
Bell Curve.
If culture is the savior against the hereditarians and those persuaded by The
Bell Curve, culture must contain the answer as we search for an explanation of the pathological sink into which some 10,000,000 Americans have fallen.
The
Bell Curve appropriately points to cognition and intelligence as a major force mediating human behavior and social conditions.
Not Merton, an "evangelical" devotee of the
bell curve.
By way of illustration he cited two of what he regarded as his great achievements, publication of extracts from The
Bell Curve and Ruth Shalit's meticulously reported piece" on The Washington Post's "bizarre racial quotas in hiring and promotion.
To try forming an impartial opinion of The
Bell Curve at this point is like trying to find an unbiased juror for the O.
The publication of The
Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein, besides igniting the question of racial inferiority, sparks renewed interest in another old question: Why is there an enduring black-white earnings gap?
