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Measured Lies: The Bell Curve Examined
In Measures Lies, the first thoughtful and reasoned reading of The Bell Curve, the editors have assembled a group of the most well-respected educators and social theorists writing today to provide responses to Hernstein and Murray's racial and intellectual agenda.
468 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1996
43 people want to read
About the author
Joe L. Kincheloe
76 books5 followersJoe Lyons Kincheloe (December 14, 1950 – December 19, 2008) was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and founder of The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy. He wrote more than 45 books, numerous book chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical pedagogy, educational research, urban studies, cognition, curriculum, and cultural studies.
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August 7, 2024
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS CRITIQUING "THE BELL CURVE”
The editors note in their introductory chapter, "One does not have to read far to discover ['The Bell Curve'] is obsessed with differences in intelligence between different races and classes of people... 239 of the book's 552 pages (43 percent) explicitly concern comparisons of black, Latino and white intelligence and its effects. Indeed, even when African Americans and Latinos are not specifically mentioned, The Bell Curve is hard at work justifying the genetic arguments which support the contention that Whites are innately superior. To argue that the book is not primarily about race is duplicitous." (Pg. 5)
They add, "A sizable number of the sources utilized by Herrnstein and Murray were produced by Pioneer Fund recipients... The `scholarship' supported by the Pioneer Fund is uniformly racist... Besides the Pioneer Fund another cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment is `Mankind Quarterly'---a white supremacist journal... [Herrnstein and Murray] used five articles published in `Mankind Quarterly' and seventeen scholars who had published in it as their sources in The Bell Curve..." (Pg. 39)
Another notes, "According to contemporaries, New York's `Hell's Kitchen' in the 1860s was full of atavistic Irishmen who made the streets unsafe. They too were seen literally as a race apart and were accused of reproducing at an uncomfortably high rate... Such myths about the relationship between `low intelligence' and `race' are basic to Western science at least since the mid-eighteenth century..." (Pg. 268)
An essayist states, "'In The Mismeasure of Man,' [Stephen Jay] Gould concludes, that the average difference between the scores of Whites and Blacks might still only reflect the environmental disadvantages of Blacks. Since then, there have been no new advances in the argument that race determines intelligence. In the face of this, Herrnstein and Murray only offer vague disclaimers: `Foreign-born blacks score about five IQ points higher than native-born blacks, for reasons we do not know.'" (Pg. 304)
This book is another of the best commentaries on 'The Bell Curve,' along with 'The Bell Curve Debate, 'The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America,' and 'Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve.'
The editors note in their introductory chapter, "One does not have to read far to discover ['The Bell Curve'] is obsessed with differences in intelligence between different races and classes of people... 239 of the book's 552 pages (43 percent) explicitly concern comparisons of black, Latino and white intelligence and its effects. Indeed, even when African Americans and Latinos are not specifically mentioned, The Bell Curve is hard at work justifying the genetic arguments which support the contention that Whites are innately superior. To argue that the book is not primarily about race is duplicitous." (Pg. 5)
They add, "A sizable number of the sources utilized by Herrnstein and Murray were produced by Pioneer Fund recipients... The `scholarship' supported by the Pioneer Fund is uniformly racist... Besides the Pioneer Fund another cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment is `Mankind Quarterly'---a white supremacist journal... [Herrnstein and Murray] used five articles published in `Mankind Quarterly' and seventeen scholars who had published in it as their sources in The Bell Curve..." (Pg. 39)
Another notes, "According to contemporaries, New York's `Hell's Kitchen' in the 1860s was full of atavistic Irishmen who made the streets unsafe. They too were seen literally as a race apart and were accused of reproducing at an uncomfortably high rate... Such myths about the relationship between `low intelligence' and `race' are basic to Western science at least since the mid-eighteenth century..." (Pg. 268)
An essayist states, "'In The Mismeasure of Man,' [Stephen Jay] Gould concludes, that the average difference between the scores of Whites and Blacks might still only reflect the environmental disadvantages of Blacks. Since then, there have been no new advances in the argument that race determines intelligence. In the face of this, Herrnstein and Murray only offer vague disclaimers: `Foreign-born blacks score about five IQ points higher than native-born blacks, for reasons we do not know.'" (Pg. 304)
This book is another of the best commentaries on 'The Bell Curve,' along with 'The Bell Curve Debate, 'The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America,' and 'Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve.'
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