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Disadvantage: The Genetic Case 71acknowledged that there was ‘little information’ about the possibilities ofa genetic basis to disadvantage (Jensen, 1968: 22). It was only in thenotorious 1969 paper that Jensen came down on the side of a ‘genetichypothesis’ (Jensen, 1969: 82; see also Jensen, 1973), although he stillconsidered environmental interactions to be important. Regardless of itscorrectness, this demonstration of an evolving position is not consistentwith a racist perspective, where intellectual stasis is the norm. Jensen cancertainly be accused, however, of making ill-considered and inflammatorystatements:Is there a danger that current welfare policies, unaided by eugenicforesight, could lead to the genetic enslavement of a substantialsegment of our population? (Jensen, 1969: 95)As we have already seen, assessments of inherent intellectual inferiorityhave generally relied upon intelligence tests and the measurement ofIQ differences, and Jensen’s investigations were no exceptions. Of course,some tests are clearly biased in favor of certain groups not all theiniquities of the early 20th-century evaluations of immigrants have goneunremarked and so Jensen and others have typically tried to avoidmeasures of highly specific abilities, relying rather upon tests tappingmore general mental capacity. Distinctions between specific and generalabilities all derive from Spearman’s early 20th-century categorizations ofintelligence (see Spearman, 1927; Spearman & Wynn Jones, 1950). Sincethen, many different types and classifications of intelligence have beenproposed; for comparisons of different social populations, however,the avoidance of group-specific measures remains the most essentialfeature.A basic and insurmountable difficulty remains, however. All tests nomatter how ‘culture-free’ or ‘culture-fair’ or ‘non-verbal’ are devised atsome time, by someone, to measure something. Even if the object is to taphighly abstract, non-verbal intelligence (for example), socioculturaldeterminations of intelligence cannot be avoided. While tests canobviously be made less directly related to the knowledge and skillsavailable more to one group than to another, even measures ofapparently general factors involve assumptions about intelligence thatderive from a given set of values. To return to the central actors in thiscontemporary version of the drama, the argument that black and whitechildren share much that is culturally common, and hence should not bediscriminated against by tests of so-called ‘general’ ability, simply doesnot come to terms with the degree and subtlety of group differences thatmay exist.