 Locke postulates three conceptions of race: theoretical or scientific, political, and social or cultural. Scientific conceptions posit race as natural biological kinds. The existence of race and racial differentiation are explained in terms of biological or ethnological features of human populations. Scientific theories frequently assert a natural biological hierarchy between races and aim to explain divergent cultural characteristics of groups though biological factors. Locke argues that genetic inheritance varies both within and between human populations and cannot be the basis for the sociological concept of race. The factors that create genetic subdivisions of the human species such as physical and social reproductive isolation produce various consequences (Locke, 1989, 190 – 92 see also Locke, 1992, 4–6) that may not vary conterminously with the group’s social history. Genetic subdivisions produce population variances that may not track the social distinctions that a given society deems salient in terms of group identity.