Environmental explanation applied to Indians but never to Blacks

Evidence

The reason for Native Americans having fewer children than Whites was “not in a difference of nature, but of circumstance,” Jefferson argued. For Black people, the opposite was true. “The blacks,” he said, “whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” The ambitious politician, maybe fearful of alienating potential friends, maybe torn between Enlightenment antislavery and American proslavery, maybe honestly unsure, did not pick sides between polygenesists and monogenesists, between segregationists and assimilationists, between slavery and freedom. But he did pick the side of racism. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 289

Categorization

• XREF: The Nature-versus-circumstance asymmetry is a precise tool for classifying any racial argument: environment can explain ‘inferiority’ only for favored groups. This is the exact analytical device the reader wants to apply elsewhere.
• SEED: Could support an essay on how the same thinker applies circumstance-explanations selectively to protect one group while denying them to another — a general technique in ideologies.