ABSTRACT

Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s attempts to bring race and the heritable trait of intelligence into these debates are no longer widely accepted. Mainstream discussions of race have moved on. In the wake of several high-profile killings of unarmed black men by police officers, the discussion on race centers on race and justice. “The twentieth century dawned on a world segregated into social classes defined in terms of money, power, and status. The ancient lines of separation based on hereditary rank were being erased, replaced by a more complicated set of overlapping lines. Social standing played a major role, if less often accompanied by a sword or tiara, but so did out-and-out wealth, educational credentials, and, increasingly, talent.” While economics, rather than biology, is seen as the basis for class stratification, the status of The Bell Curve as one of the most explosive works of social science to have been produced in the twentieth century is secure.