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Source: Black Scholar
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Jackson, Jacquelyne Johnson
The Bell Curve: What's All the Fuss About?
The Black Scholar 25,1 (Winter 1995): 11-20
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Black World Foundation
Keyword(s): Cognitive Ability; Intelligence; Intelligence Tests; Racial Differences; Social Roles; Socioeconomic Status (SES)

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

A critique of Richard J. Herrstein's and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (see IRPS No. 79/95c02104) is offered. The Bell Curve is a relatively unsophisticated and highly polemic attempt to discuss issues surrounding intelligence and race. Too often it commingles issues, theory, fact, ethics, and public policy.Specific criticisms of The Bell Curve include: (1) use of unwarranted premises in analyzing black and white cognitive ability, including inappropriate operational definition of blacks, reliance on classical tradition of studying intelligence, assumption that cognitive ability is not malleable and is a determinant of socioeconomic status, and extrapolation of findings from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Youth to different black age cohorts; and (2) unwarranted assumption of the consequences of higher fertility rates among women of lower cognitive ability. The differential impact of The Bell Curve and the work of Thomas Sowell (e.g., 1984) is discussed. 29 References. D. Generoli (Copyright 1995, Sociological Abstracts, Inc., all rights reserved.)
Bibliography Citation
Jackson, Jacquelyne Johnson. "The Bell Curve: What's All the Fuss About?" The Black Scholar 25,1 (Winter 1995): 11-20.