That’s a good way to put it - eliminating other factors ends up deceptively making it look like genetics are the only difference. On the topic of IQ, the importance of those other factors is implied by things like the Flynn effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Proposed_explanat...)? It’s also evident in how IQ varies by country. In developing countries, average IQ can measure low due to issues like malnutrition, access to education, etc. Those differences change as those countries develop or across different parts of those countries or when you track immigration populations from those countries.

Oddly, denial of these other variables has become core to scientific racism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism). For example, a Danish white supremacist named Emil Kirkegaard went so far as to create a fake journal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPsych) to publish flagrantly incorrect papers on IQ that try to deny these factors and paint the IQ of non-white countries as low, with the only explanation being their “inferior” race/genetics. In fact, he just recently wrote a new “paper” (https://openpsych.net/paper/85/) that has been widely retweeted by supremacists on X.

> denial of these other variables has become core to scientific racism

Scientific racism has always operated this way. When it wasn't fabricating evidence, it was cherry-picking or failing to account for environmental causes. It would be interesting to see how historical claims made in this context hold up (I would expect to see changes that negate the claims; something that comes to mind is that the Dutch were one of the shortest peoples in Europe, but later in the 19th century became one of the tallest).

> flagrantly incorrect papers on IQ that try to deny these factors and paint the IQ of non-white countries as low, with the only explanation being their “inferior” race/genetics

I think the more important point we need to remember is that even if we were to discover that some groups have a genetic predisposition for higher IQ (putting aside the controversial nature of IQ to begin with), those with predisposition for lower IQ are still human and thus still owed what is due by virtue of their basic human dignity. It's also possible that over time, adaptation would change this predisposition. Populations aren't static.