Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America

A call for the separation of race and state, backed by a deep dive into the surreal world of racial classification in America.

"The racial categories that the schools use are completely bonkers, an arbitrary mess mostly left over from the work of federal bureaucrats in the 1970s that can't withstand the slightest scrutiny.... Justice Samuel Alito raised this issue in [the Harvard affirmative action case], pretty clearly relying on the work of George Mason University professor David Bernstein, who eviscerated the categories in an amicus brief and has written a book on their origin and implications, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America."

-National Review

Americans have come to accept certain standard ethnic and racial classifications--Black, White, Asian American, Hispanic, and Native American--as if they are part of the natural order of things. In fact, they are the product of regulations quietly enacted by federal bureaucrats in 1977. Where did these classifications come from? How are they defined? If someone's self-identification is disputed, how are they enforced? What should become of them in the future, with affirmative action preferences that rely on these classifications under legal threat, and the classifications themselves becoming increasingly incoherent after decades of large-scale immigration and increased interracial marriage? This book answers all those questions in a lively, well-researched, persuasive manner.

David E. Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he has been teaching since 1995.

Known as a fearless contrarian, Professor Bernstein often challenges the conventional wisdom with prodigious research and sharp, original analysis. His book Rehabilitating Lochner was praised across the political spectrum as "intellectual history in its highest form," a "fresh perspective and a cogent analysis," "delightful and informative," "sharp and iconoclastic," "well-written and destined to be influential," and "a terrific work of historical revisionism."
 
George Will, writing in the Washington Post, proclaimed that Bernstein's latest book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classifications in America is "potentially 2022's most consequential American book." Professor Scott Douglas Gerber, reviewing Classified in Law & Liberty, added that it's a "must-read." Less than a year after its publication date, Classified has already upended the debate over racial classifications in America. Among other things, the book is widely credited with inspiring several pointed questions from Supreme Court Justices during oral arguments about the constitutionality of university affirmative action programs.