David Bernstein is a law professor at George Mason University and the author of Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America. The book is a fascinating look at the disconnect between racial classifications as they are routinely employed in 21st Century America and, well, reality. It’s fascinating that many categorizations and terms that we take for granted today are quite recent innovations, and aren’t particularly rooted in any sort of cultural or biological or historical ground. As the Supreme Court weighs affirmative action in higher education this term, it’s likely that Bernstein’s book will be influential. I asked him a few questions.
1. So we spend a lot of time talking about race and ethnicity in America, but it seems like the basic thesis of your book is that we have no idea what we’re talking about. Is that right?
Americans typically make two primary errors about race. The first is that the racial classifications we use in common parlance–Black, White, Asian, Native American, Hispanic—are somehow natural and arose spontaneously. Very few of us realize that the US government codified them in 1977 in a formal federal law called Statistical Directive No. 15. Before that, almost no one called people of Spanish-speaking descent “Hispanics.” What we now call “Asian Americans” were nothing like a coherent group; Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino Americans had distinct cultures and significant history inter-group conflict. Americans from India were typically classified as “white” or “other,” but a last-minute lobbying campaign resulted in them being added to the Asian American group.
Relatedly, very few Americans are familiar with the scope of the federal classifications and how their definition. For example, Hispanics are officially an ethnicity, not a race, but the media often treats them as a racial group. Contrary to popular belief, “Hispanic” includes Spaniards, but not Brazilians. The government defines indigenous people from Spanish-speaking countries as having Hispanic ethnicity, but thanks to lobbying from Native American tribes, are not “Indians” and have no racial box that fits them. Arab Americans, Iranians, Armenians, and other people from Western Asia are white, not Asian or Middle Eastern (there is no such official classification).