I did not time my book on racial classifications to coincide with litigation over affirmative action. Indeed, the book is not about affirmative action, and much of the book has nothing directly to do with it.
Of course, though, it turns out that you can't talk about the post-World War II history of government racial classification without affirmative action coming up, because that's both where it's more controversial and where almost all the cases addressing individual claims to minority status arise. And it turns out the racial (and ethnic, given that "Hispanic" is officially an ethnicity, not a race) classifications used by universities in the affirmative action context were never intended to be used for "diversity" purposes, and don't really fit the diversity rationale dictated by the Supreme Court as the only valid reason to use race in admissions. (I have no idea what Harvard would say if asked why, say, the five hundredth Mexican American in its freshman class would be deemed to officially add diversity to its class, such that it keeps track of such numbers and officially touts them when promoting its diversity, but the first Hmong, Afghan, Laplander, Mongolian, Turkman, Icelander, or Bobover Hasid would not; I doubt it would be anything terribly coherent.)
In any event, the book happened to come out in July, and I also filed an amicus brief with the Court in the Spring (authored by attorney Cory Liu) explaining why, based on the research in my book, the classifications Harvard and UNC use are wildly arbitrary–really, over-inclusive (white Spanish immigrants get a benefit for being "Hispanic"), under-inclusive (members of the groups noted above are officially "White" or "Asian American" and at best get no benefit for adding diversity) and ultimately irrational (why are Pakistanis and Filipinos, who have nothing in common beyond what any two random groups of human may have in the same Asian-American "diversity" category?)
