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The Michael Shermer Show

315. David Bernstein — Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4921 Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2023

⏱️ 100 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Shermer and Bernstein discuss: the SCOTUS case on affirmative action and race preferences at Harvard and elsewhere • Elizabeth Warren (Cherokee ancestry — Bureau of Indian Affairs rejects?) • Tiger Woods: Cablinasian (European, African, Thai, Chinese ancestry) • George Zimmerman (Hispanic, half Hispanic, mixed-race, White Hispanic, White, or…?) • Rachel Dolezal (NAACP official, adopted an African American identity, though has none) • Kamala Harris (child of an Indian immigrant mother, father of mixed-African and European heritage from Jamaica) • BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) • ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) • the biology and legality of race • the one-drop rule of race classification • the rise of modern racial classification • Hispanic, Italian, Polish, Jewish, Armenian, Cajun, South Asian, Arab, and Iranian categories • American Indians/Native Americans • race classification and reparations • How can we achieve a race-blind society?

David E. Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William and Mary, Brooklyn Law School, and the University of Turin. 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.” Professor Bernstein blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy (the leading law professor blog) and at Instapundit.com. Professor Bernstein is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy. Professor Bernstein is married and has three children of mixed Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Spanish-Jewish origin. He prefers not to classify them.

Transcript

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Here's an example.

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I'm going to give you this one, talk about this one that has come up in my feed. I've heard some of these lectures already

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