ABSTRACT
Racial differences are more likely to correlate with differences in wealth or in education as measured by formal attainments, so that the most obvious social distinctions within the population prove to be those of race. People are thought of firstly as members of particular ethnic groups— Europeans, Indians, Lebanese, Africans— and other characteristics or allegiances are subordinated. It will be apparent that the ethnic and economic classes are closely related. A European is accorded prestige simply for being a European; the African, as an African and not as a particular individual, is identified with the socially inferior group. Membership of any ethnic group largely determined the amount of prestige a man could win in the society at large. The pattern of stratification is changing from one in which closed ethnic classes were ordered hierarchically to one showing a series of economic strata of uneven thickness split by several vertical faults which follow ethnic lines.
