Classified Quotes

“Pooling people in race silos is akin to zoologists grouping raccoons, tigers, and okapis on the basis that they are all stripey.” 8”
― David E. Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America

“The need to satisfy FDA and NIH rules can also slow down important biomedical research, ultimately costing lives. In fall 2020, Moderna announced it was slowing enrollment in its clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine to ensure it had sufficient minority representation among study participants. As thousands of people worldwide were dying of COVID-19-related ailments, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel made the remarkable assertion that diversity in research subjects “matters more to [Moderna] than speed.”55 NIH director Francis Collins later revealed that Moderna was not acting autonomously but rather under his direction.56 He told Moderna that it needed to recruit more “people of color” (i.e., people other than non-Hispanic whites), before NIH would acknowledge the vaccine’s safety.”
― David E. Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America

“These studies, moreover, do not start from neutral premises. Rather, the “crucial failing of all biomedical research dealing with race” is that it begins with the presumption that race is relevant and then looks for information to corroborate this presumption.9”
― David E. Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America

“The standardized racial and ethnic categories developed in Statistical Directive No. 15 in 1977 (see Chapter One), came with an explicit warning these “classifications should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature.”1 And indeed, the classifications have no valid scientific or anthropological basis. Yet the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) require medical researchers to classify study participants by Directive 15 categories.”
― David E. Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America

“The 2006 ruling, however, prompted a backlash from some segments of Cherokee society. They launched a campaign to amend the tribal constitution to supersede the court’s decision and again deny citizenship to the Freedmen. Central to the campaign were concerns about the distribution of benefits among tribal members. As a mass email circulated by supporters of the amendment forebodingly asked, “Do you want non-Indians…using your Health Care Dollars? …getting your Cherokee Nation scholarship dollars? …making your Housing wait list longer?”
― David E. Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America

“Nevertheless, African American civil rights groups and their allies in the federal government expressed strong and sustained opposition to recognizing a multiracial category. They feared that because many African Americans have known white ancestry, providing a multiracial option might reduce the number of people identifying as black on government forms.89 This would be make it more difficult to bring voting rights and other legal claims that rely on statistical evidence of discrimination.”
― David E. Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America

“The SBA invited public comments on the Hasidim’s application. The agency received strongly negative feedback, primarily from African Americans. Congressman Parren Mitchell, the leading congressional advocate for the Section 8(a) program, sent a letter to numerous African American entrepreneurs and politicians warning that “inclusion of Hasidic Jews would ‘dilute…existing resources earmarked for…other minorities.’”67 (As discussed in Chapter Four, this concern did not prevent Mitchell from lobbying for Indian Americans to be included in the Section 8(a) program.)”
― David E. Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America

“Researchers discovered that for a given cohort of law school graduates, there was a massive disparity between those who listed themselves as Native American lawyers on the census (228) and the number of self-identified Native Americans who graduated law school over that same time period (2,610).25 In other words, over ten times as many people claimed to be Native American when they applied to law school than identified themselves as Native American lawyers once they graduated.”
― David E. Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America