Book Review: Classified

Despite constitutional language stating that all citizens are entitled to equal protection of the laws, the federal, state, and many local governments have adopted policies that classify Americans in certain ways and then use those classifications to treat them differently. Everyone agrees that the way many of the southern states used to draw distinctions between people to maintain white supremacy was abominable, but in modern America we continue to do something similar. The supposed difference between the old days of segregation and today’s racial classifications is that our present policies are meant to help rather than to hinder.In his new book Classified, Professor David Bernstein of the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University takes a penetrating look at the way governments today continue to classify people by race, and the consequences are generally bad. The classifications, he shows, are arbitrary and incoherent, rewarding some and penalizing others without rhyme or reason. Even if you think there’s good reason to favor Americans whose ancestors were held in slavery, racial preferences have expanded so much that very few of those who receive these benefits have any such claim. Mostly, our race‐​based policies benefit people who immigrated to the United States after 1965 and their descendants, as well as those Bernstein calls “identity entrepreneurs,” which is to say, people who try to get ahead by posing as members of “protected” groups.