A number of efforts have been made since the onset of the scientific age toward measuring various traits in order to identify specific characteristics differentiating racial characteristics, often in an attempt to show that certain groups are inferior to the majority Caucasian group. Stephen Jay Gould describes a number of these efforts as they were attempted in the early decades of this century, often as a means of classifying and even rejecting immigrants on the basis of supposed intelligence or criminal tendencies. Such efforts are attempts at proving a determinist perspective, and Gould wants to show that there are scientific weaknesses to this perspective and also that they occur in a political rather than a scientific context. We often confuse the concept of "racial" groups with "ethnic" groups, and we may use the terms interchangeably when they refer to very different types of group differences. In many ways, our society expresses confusion on the issue, at one time seeming to make the distinction, while at other times failing to do so. At other times, we may speak of the two as if they are one. Recently, of course, the entire issue has been complicated by a scientific view that race itself has no meaning and that racial distinctions are themselves false. This is in contravention to the long-standing view that the concept of race did indeed have meaning and that there were real biological differences among the races, while now scientists say that these differences are not substantive. Prior to this, however, and in the popular view, racial distinctions are at least indicative of surface biological differences in skin color, hair type, and perhaps even body type. Ethnic differences relate more to geography and culture. To a great degree, these differences are social constructs that have real consequences as different policies are formed and implemented based on racial and ethnic classifications.
Many of those attem...