Actually, that's not true and that's not what the authors said. The Bell Curve is a very frequently misquoted book.
Herrnstein and Murray acknowledged that IQ can change rapidly between generations and that explained why the children of some generations of Europeans (Slavs, I think) tested much higher than their parents generation. That clearly cannot be genetics at work. Children who were brought up in a home where the parents had at least some basic public school education did much better than their parents.
The problems in many AA communities are the abysmal school systems that filed the parents a generation ago and are now failing the kids.
Originally Posted by ExNYer
Surely you're not suggesting that genetics is not a factor in intelligence. The Bell Curve does conclude that blacks have lower IQ's than other races. It also concludes that genetics is a significant factor, along with environment. The Bell Curve is not simplistic and acknowleges that all races have a full range of IQ's.
Here's a quote from Charles Murray:
It seems highly likely to us that both genes and environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate.
I've always been amazed by the firestorm created by The Bell Curve. If the writers had done a scholarly study of kidney function and concluded that African-American kidneys appeared to be prone to failure and that the cause appeared to be genetic, no one would have been offended or angry. No one would have called them racists; but because Murray and Herrnstein dared to suggest that the brain function of one race might be inferior to other races, they've been attacked as monsters.
Herrnstein was barely able to teach at Harvard because of protestors and death threats caused by his published studies on race and IQ . He had to have an armed guard present at his lectures; he was dying of cancer at the time. The left doesn't tolerate freedom of thought very well.
http://bostonreview.net/BR20.6/block.html
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx