I read the bell Curve as well and found that it most certainly didn’t fit the slander it has been painted with. In fact, I got the impression that the author laid a lot of blame as the feet of the academic elite.
I know these same academic elite today are the primary source of some awfully damaging social manipulation, education, and social programs.
The adamant push for “affirmative action” despite a generation and a half of equal or even preferential treatment for minorities actually supports “the Bell Curve”’s findings.
If blacks two generations removed from Jim Crow discrimination are still incapable of equal test scores and academic achievement, on average, there is either a genetic or cultural inferiority. Saying you have to accept blacks with test scores 10% or 20% less on a broad scale has remained the law because they cannot otherwise get into top colleges and honors programs means they as a group are not equal.
There are intelligent blacks. I’ve worked with several. But a lower average means fewer in the high IQ area. Or it means there are fewer blacks willing to rebel against the culture of low academic expectations and the ridicule of those who get straight A’s as “acting white”.
But either way, it is something that group must confront and correct on its own.