This book seeks to develop sociological theory adequate to deal with the various uses to which racism has been put. How particular political orders apply "scientific" rationalizations, including race, to disguise their true origins in force, violence, and usurpation is demonstrated. Analysis of exploitative conditions starts with an objective situation of differentiation, inequality, and pluralism between groups, proceeds to the impulse to distinguish among groups, and then observes the rationalization of this discrimination in terms of some theory, frequently but not necessarily biological. The book provides a useful critique of prevalent theories of stratification, and concludes in a final theoretical chapter that there is a distant field of race relations studies. (Author/DM)