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, 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.