Word: jensenism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...following is a letter from William F. Brazziel, director of General Education at Virginia State College, Norfolk, Va. It was written to the Harvard Education Review in reply to an article by Arthur A. Jensen stating that genetic differences between blacks and whites are the chief cause of the gap between white and black IQs as measured by traditional intelligence tests...
...fact is, however, that Jensen does prejudge the issue. He has looked at the data on compensatory education, and taken the most pessimistic of positions. "Compensatory education has been tried," his opening line proclaims, "and it has apparently failed." He also intimates that his genetic hypothesis seems the most likely successor to the environmentalist argument. "The preponderance of evidence," he intones, "is, in my opinion less consistent with a strictly environmental hypothesis than with a genetic hypothesis...
...these statements are simply irresponsible. The compensatory position is not discredited, for the same reason his analysis is flawed. first of all, the notion of heretability as a quantity separable from environmental influence is at best questionable. The interaction between gene structure and environment is a complex one, and Jensen has not sufficiently isolated one factor from the other. He argues, for instance, that environment operates as a threshhold variable in affecting development. Below a certain minimum threshhold of environmental benefits, the genetic potential of an individual does not develop, and cannot be considered an important variable in determining...
...fact, whatever, genetic differences exist may be nothing more than the artificial products of oppression by a dominant society. Jensen himself admits that assortative mating--marrying at one's own level of mental ability--tends to raise the general level of intelligence by inbreeding genes which produce success. If social circumstances prevented a group's members from choosing their own marriage partners, or prevented the valuing of intelligence, environmental factors could have artificially depressed the natural level of intelligence in the group's population. Relieving those oppressive circumstances would, of course, permit readaptation and a return to parity...
...Jensen article is not an evil document. It is just mistaken. Having its arguments out in the open is better than having them swishing around in the back of people's minds...