Educability-and-Group-Differences-1973-by-Arthur-Robert-Jensen

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Environmental rationalization
versus environmental research
In the chapters that follow, it is necessary to distinguish ‘environmentalism’
from research on the environment. Environmentalism
is the scientifically anomalous attitude that ignores, shuns, or
denigrates any hypothesis of genetic causation in specific classes
of human individual or group differences. Environmentalists
differ among themselves in the kinds of differences from which
they exclude the possibility of genetic influences. Thus we see
environmentalists who accept the findings on the heritability of
individual differences in intelligence but who vehemently argue
against the suggestion that genetic factors may be involved in any
subpopulation differences, social-class or racial. Still others
acknowledge the evidence on genetic intelligence differences among
social classes within racial groups, but categorically reject without
evidence the hypothesis that specific racial groups differ genetically
in mental abilities. Some will admit genetic explanations, or at
least grant their plausibility, regarding racial differences in physical
and sensory capacities, while not allowing the possibility of genetic
differences in more complex mental capabilities. The idea that
certain small and isolated racial groups, such as the Australian
Bushmen, might differ genetically from major racial groups in
mental capacities is viewed only with a mild skepticism by some
environmentalists, who vociferously denounce those who would
question wholly environmental theories of intelligence differences
between major racial groups.
The aim of the environmentalist, almost as a matter of principle,
is to ‘explain’ a given human difference as due wholly to