[JoeFromSidney]

In the Air Force I encountered a lot of Blacks, either officers or Civil Service doing engineering work. I worked with them, I commanded them, and in one case my commanding officer was a black Colonel. Granted, to get in the Air Force you have to meet certain minimum standards, but in all cases the Blacks I met were fully competitive with their White counterparts.

Also, be careful how you interpret the Bell Curve. The researchers who wrote the book stated that the mean for Blacks was half a standard deviation below the mean for Whites. However, that still means a fair number of Blacks in the right hand end of the Bell Curve, above the mean for Whites.

[donmeaker]

The difference between means between groups is less than the standard deviation within groups.

That means that there is greater difference within the group than their is between groups. When that happens, you shouldn’t use group membership (alone) to drive decisions.