This article presents some of the issues surrounding The Bell Curve, a book written by Charles Murray. The Bell Curve is based on a deeply pessimistic view of the American society. Murray and co-author Richard Herrnstein argue that intellectuals and policy makers have overlooked the role of intelligence in determining wealth, poverty and social status. There are three main arguments offered by Murray and Herrnstein. First is the issue of social class. Murray and Herrnstein reason that social class is determined by the "cognitive elite." This label is applied to those who are able to pass the standardized tests established by our society. Secondly, the authors see socialpathologies like poverty, welfare dependency, illegitimacy and crime as strongly related to IQ. The last argument focuses on blacks scoring significantly lower than whites on IQ tests. At the end of the book Murray and Herrnstein begin to argue about the issue of whether the origin of blacks'lower IQ scores is genetic or environmental. The controversy centers largely around this last section of the book. The authors argue that the evidence of a black-white IQ gap is overwhelming, and that this gap largely accounts for the economic and social differences between blacks and whites in American society.

The value of this book has already been challenged. Opponents argue that the book will not withstand scientific and scholarly criticism. The research used by the authors was limited. The authors create racial conflict throughout their book without supportive evidence for their conclusions. This Newsweek article calls attention to some of the limitations of The Bell Curve. The book's presentation and use of information are found to be very narrow and ethnocentric.