Race, gender and the future of intelligence

Came across this article by Malcolm Gladwell that was published 10 years ago in The New Yorker. Funnily enough this relates to a subject that has troubled me somewhat for many years, namely what is the origin of some of the seemingly strong ethnic or gender differences that we see around us. Unfortunately this indeed is a subject that most people find to be taboo. I have not run a search on Gladwell's sources (he doesn't reference them in great detail...) but indeed his argument is interesting, compelling and at least he gets some of this stuff into the open. Of course some heated subjects were not covered there and are somewhat not not in line with his argument, namely - what account for the big discrepancy in scholastic achievement between ethnic groups. Personally I subscribe to the theory that these differences probably stem mostly form the socioeconomic setting of our current time where white people have on the average better resources and an easier path to learning than some other minorities like African - Americans or Latin Americans. The same goes for women. Probably the strongest hint in that direction (at least in my mind) is the fact that if we look back in history many of the past scholastic achievements were made by non whites (mostly in the far and middle east).
This of course does not rule out the option that there is some ethnic or gender based difference. maybe there is some serious research in this subject matter - not sure.
I have recently read some material on William Shockley (Nobel laureate physicist - father of the transistor). It turns out he was an advocate of Eugenics and even donated sperm to a high IQ sperm bank. This issue is of course highly debatable (I am personally not even sure what my own thoughts on the matter are!!!) and has given rise to many new areas of thought in Bioethics (some of which centered around the great effort of the Human Genome Project to research moral issues surrounding their work).
And if all this is'nt complicated enough - I have been bouncing some thoughts in my head (more in another post) relating to human brain augmentation and surrounding subjects. I wonder how the clash of the Transhumanist movement (that advocates human augmentation towards a better future) with the Singularitans and proponents of superintelligent A.I. will pan out. Are man and machine the same?
I wish I was intelligent enough and had some more time to research all this.

MC