 Locke understood race as primarily a product of social culture. Locke denies as do nearly all contemporary race theorists that races are biologically distinct categories of human beings. Locke maintained that culture and race were distinct, but often overlapping categories. There is no tight causal or otherwise necessary connection between race and culture. The two are mutually exclusive even though they do sometimes vary together or otherwise correspond. Race, for Locke, is not determinative of culture or civilization. Locke's position on race does not deny, as some of his contemporaries concerned with the notion of race and culture did, that there ever is a significant connection between racial and cultural factors, nor does it deny that “race stands for significant social characters and culture-traits or represents in given historical contexts characteristic differentiations of culture-type” (CRASC 188). This is primarily a cautionary observation on Locke's part seeing as how