CLASSIFIED UPDATE: I have posted the Introduction to Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, here.

Meanwhile, here’s a roundup of recent podcasts and reviews for Classified.

Podcasts

Podcast with Coleman Hughes, conversations with Coleman

James Wilson Institute

Jewish Institute for Liberal Values

Reviews

Robert VerBruggen, Washington Examiner

Bacon at Bacon’s Rebellion

Yassine Meskhout on Jesse Singal’s substack (paywall)

Kristin Shapiro at Independent Women’s Forum

THE ODDS THAT EVEN ONE PERSON ACTUALLY SAID THIS TO LIZ WARREN ARE NO BETTER THAN 1/1024:

IN SHORT, NOTHING GOOD: What a ‘MENA’ racial classification would mean for American Jews. Though it would be fun to be a fly on the wall when Linda Sarsour discovers that the new Middle Eastern and North African classification she is pushing for, meant to turn Muslim Arabs and Iranians into a victim class eligible for affirmative action, winds up being claimed by millions of American Jews.

TRY BEFORE YOU BUY: A helpful reader reports that the Introduction and the first few pages of the first chapter of Classified are available for free as a “preview” at Scribd.

WELL, IF THEY DIDN’T INVENT IT THEY SURE CONTINUE TO FIND IT USEFUL TO PROMOTE DIVISION BASED ON IT: How the Government Invented Race.

“CLASSIFIED” REVIEW AND PODCAST UPDATE: My book on racial classification’s official publication date was Tuesday, and it’s already garnered several reviews and I have appeared on a bunch of podcasts. So if you want to listen in on what all the cool kids are talking about…

Reviews

Review by Goldwater Institute President Tim Sandefur for the Objective Standard 

Review by Prof. Bill Jacobson, Legal Insurrection

Review by Ed Whelan, National Review

Podcasts

The Remnant, with Jonah Goldberg

American Institute for Economic Research

CSPI Podcast with Richard Hanania

Essential Liberty with Bob Zadek

First Things Podcast with Mark Bauerlein

Institutionalized with Charles Lehman and Aaron Sibarium

Washington Outsider Report with Irina Tsukerman

I wish I could tell you I had a favorite, the *one* podcast to listen to, but I have really  been blessed with excellent hosts, who each took the interviews in different directions depending on their interests and the natural flow of conversation.

BOOK RELEASE DAY!: Today is the official release day for my book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.

To celebrate, if you buy the book today and email me the receipt (dbernste at gmu dot edu) and your address, I will send you a signed copy of one of my previous books, either Rehabilitating Lochner or You Can’t Say That! I have many more copies of the latter than the former, so if you want a copy of the Lochner book, act fast. (Please note that I have a busy travel schedule coming up, so you may not receive your book until mid-August.)

And just so those of you who preordered the book don’t feel left out, if you preordered send me your receipt, your address, and which book you want, and I will send you a signed copy.

THE GOVERNMENT CLASSIFIED ALL IMMIGRANTS FROM EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST AS WHITE AND STILL DOES: How American Jews Stayed White. However:

That said, a change may be in the offing. The Biden administration is considering amending America’s racial classification scheme to include a classification for “Middle East and North African.” This classification would include Jews who immigrated from that region, Israelis, and some fraction of Ashkenazi Jews who consider themselves more “Middle Eastern” by religion, culture, and genetics than European.

ELON MUSK’S KIDS DON’T GET AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Whites from Africa Claiming African-American Status.

RELATED: If you’re looking for some beach reading, Classified’s official publication date is July 19.

OF COURSE, ONE CAN WONDER WHY WE HAVE A RACIAL CLASSIFICATION SCHEME TO BEGIN WITH: How Well Do You Know America’s Racial Classification System? First and Second of a Series.

My book on modern racial classification in America is due out July 19. And the Kindle is only $10.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS FRIENDS?:

INTERESTING WHAT GETS YOU A SPEAKING GIG AT CUNY LAW GRADUATION: Anti-hate watchdog criticizes CUNY Law School’s selection of commencement speaker. Canary Mission: Nerdeen Mohsen Kiswani, the force behind a violent and aggressive anti-Israel group in New York City, has been chosen to give a commencement address.

Related: In response to viral video, CUNY Law denounces antisemitism then retracts In the video, a man wearing an IDF sweatshirt is being confronted by a woman [Kiswani] holding a lit lighter and in the background is a female voice saying “I hate your shirt. I’m gonna set it on fire.”

A SIGN THERE WILL BE MASSIVE RESISTANCE IF THE SUPREME COURT INVALIDATES RACIAL PREFERENCES IN HIGHER EDUCATION THIS FALL: Utah Was Warned Racial Rationing of COVID Drugs Was Illegal. It Did It Anyway. Though to my mind, using race to ration medical care, with only the barest of pseudo-scientific justification, is a much graver sin.

Relatedly, my forthcoming book on US racial classifications, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classifications in American, is available for preorder on Kindle from Amazon for only 10 bucks. Here’s Glenn’s blurb: “We mock the racial-classifications schemes of the Jim Crow south, of Nazi Germany, and of Apartheid South Africa. But as David Bernstein ably demonstrates, our own racial classification system is just as risible, and no more scientific.”

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THEY CAN’T GET THE STORY STRAIGHT: When it comes to the controversy over Critical Race Theory, progressives have been making two contradictory arguments, neither of which are correct.

The first argument is that CRT merely describes historical examples of racism in the American legal system, and therefore should be uncontroversial except for those who want to censor discussion of the history of racism in the US.

The second argument is that CRT is not taught in public schools.

These arguments contradict each other, because public schools obviously do teach about the history of racism in the US, so if that’s all CRT is, it is indeed taught in public schools.

All this is certainly nothing new to Instapundit readers, but it is rather rare to see both arguments made within paragraphs of each other in the same article, as in this Washington Post piece:

For what it’s worth, I noted discriminatory federal housing and mortgage policy in an article I wrote in 1994, before it was cool to note that the federal government was complicit in American racism, and no one has ever accused me of being a Critical Race Theorist…

And by the way, I recently gave a talk at the University of Chicago about Critical Race Theory and the reasons it’s problematic. And I meant actual CRT, that is both taught in law schools and other academic programs and is having influence on grade school education, not the stylized, inaccurate versions that have become fodder in political debate. You can watch it here.

IT’S THE CULMINATION OF A LONGSTANDING TREND: Former ACLU leader Ira Glasser slams organization’s ‘progressive’ new agenda. During the ACLU’s heyday, from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, it was a liberal organization, but one with a genuine commitment to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and due process. It’s been on a long, gradual decline since then into just another lefty pressure group. In my 2003 book, You Can’t Say That!, I identified significant slippage in the ACLU's commitment to civil liberties. I heard through the grapevine that then-ACLU president Nadine Strossen said that my depiction of her organization was inaccurate. I sent word back through my source that if she could identify any factual errors, I would be happy to publicly apologize and correct them. I never got a response.

OUCH: Requiring anyone to swear an oath to anything beyond to tell the truth in a legal proceeding is unAmerican.

YOU CAN”T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Amnesty International holds a press conference in Jerusalem, but hates Israel so much that it advertises “Beirut time.”

Two notable things about Beirut. First, it’s controlled by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization with no respect for human rights. Second, it’s the capital of Lebanon. For decades, where Palestinians are denied citizenship, and, per Wikipedia, “they are also legally barred from owning property or entering a list of desirable occupations. Employment requires a government-issued work permit, and, according to the New York Times, although ‘Lebanon hands out and renews hundreds of thousands of work permits every year to people from Africa, Asia and other Arab countries… until now, only a handful have been given’ to Palestinians.”

Not that Amnesty cares about this because it can’t bash Israel with that information, but you would think they would at least be sensitive to the optics of refusing to even acknowledge that its press conference is in Jerusalem and instead alluding to the capital of perhaps the most anti-Palestinian country in the Middle East.

“TOO MANY ASIANS”: University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Amy Wax is being threatened with sanction by her school for expressing opposition to immigration to the US from Asia. Wax did not suggest she has anything against Asians as such; she just does not want any more Democratic voters, and Asian Americans mostly vote for Democrats. I have a variety of objections to her argument, but that’s neither here nor there.

As Glenn pointed out, the irony here is that progressives are so up in arms about Wax’s remarks, which have no actual effect on public policy, but are silent or even supportive as top universities impose implicit quotas on Asians. The universities try to disguise this bias, but progressives have been explicit about their hostility to Asian American success for a long time. Consider this interview with Bill Clinton from 1995:

“Our diversity is our great strength,” [President Clinton] declared. “If a university says, ‘Look, we’re only going to let in qualified people, but we think that the life of the university will be strengthened if we had different kinds of people,’ then I think that’s a legitimate thing.” Otherwise, he added, “there are universities in California that could fill their entire freshman classes with nothing but Asian Americans.”

There is a right answer to that, and it’s “so what?” People don’t come stamped as “Asians” or “whites” or “Hispanics.” These are labels we impose on them. In the case of “Asians” we impose on people with ancestry in places as varied as India, Mongolia, and Indonesia. If people from these backgrounds excel academically, and collectively take up even the whole freshman class at Berkeley, *so what*?

But we know, “so what?” It’s a way of trying to rally whites to be for racial preferences by suggesting that otherwise their children will be displaced by “Asians.” (I can’t find a link, but I remember a Congresswoman making this argument explicitly back in the 90s.) In other words, “diversity” concerns become an excuse for quotas against Asians. It’s gross and it’s racist, and unlike what Wax said, it does suggest hostility to Asians, as such. And it’s high time someone called progressives on this sort of thing.

THEY PROBABLY THINK JEWS SHOULD MOVE TO BIRIBIDZHAN: A marketing firm that works with Jewish groups, Big Duck, has nixed a potential client because of its Israel ties. No self-respecting Jewish group would continue to work with Big Duck. Which unfortunately means that some left-leaning Jewish groups likely will continue to be its clients.
UPDATE: It’s worth noting that the organization Big Duck is boycotting, the Shalom Hartman Institute, is left-leaning, though not “anti-Israel.” Consider, for example, this seminar: “In November 2017, thirty leading theorists and practitioners convened for a day of thoughtful discussion on topics of power and privilege. The group, comprising academics, rabbis, Jewish communal leaders, philanthropists, activists and educators, explored crucial questions of how gender, class, and race impact the distribution of authority and influence in Jewish communal life.” When the revolution eats its own, Jews tend to be the appetizer.

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER: Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.

JAMIL DAKWAR, ACLU “HUMAN RIGHTS” PROGRAM DIRECTOR, CHANNELS DAVID DUKE: Thus demonstrating the confluence of two trends: the decline of the ACLU from a principled (if often wrong-headed) liberal civil liberties organization to far-left activism, and the normalization of antisemitism on the far left so long as it can be somehow tied to Israel.

THE REALITY-BASED COMMUNITY–NOT!: A Reality Check for Progressives on the Rittenhouse Case: “In these and many other instances [of armed self-defense during the summer 2020 riots], there is not a white nationalist, or a vigilante, in sight. Just people, usually local residents, trying to protect their neighborhoods from chaos and destruction while the police stood down, usually on orders from superiors.”

AMERICAN PARENTS ARE TERRORISTS, BUT PFLP FRONTS ARE NOT?:

WE LIVE IN ORWELLIAN TIMES:

Also:

IN FAIRNESS, THE PRESIDENT IS SAYING THE SAME THING; OTOH, HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE A *FACT-CHECKER,* AND THE IDEA THAT $3.5 TRILLION IN SPENDING ISN’T A COST IS AN EGREGIOUS ORWELLIAN LIE: