Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and the Democratic Party’s newly minted candidate for mayor of New York City, found himself in some hot water last week after The New York Times reported that he claimed to be both Asian and "Black or African American" on his college application to Columbia University.
Many Black New Yorkers are not happy about that, including incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is actually Black and is running for re-election as an independent.
Adams said in a statement: “The African American identity is not a check-box of convenience. It’s a history, a struggle and a lived experience. For someone to exploit that for personal gain is deeply offensive.”
The conservative New York Post had a field day with the news, and interviewed numerous Black New Yorkers who described Mamdani as a fraud and a liar.
This matters because Mamdani is an exciting candidate for many progressive and far-left voters, whites, and the affluent; for Black voters and the working class, Mamdani is perhaps not quite so alluring. While he easily won the Democratic mayoral primary two weeks ago, rival Andrew Cuomo, the scandal-plagued former governor of the state, performed significantly better with African-Americans.
As far as Mamdani’s identity goes, he was born in Uganda, but he is of Indian descent. He is an therefore African, and he is now American, but the term African-American is usually understood to mean Black — and he is definitely not Black. However, when applying to Columbia University in 2009, Mamdani checked the boxes for “Indian” and “Black or African-American” when asked to give information about his race and ethnicity. Mamdani openly admits to doing so, and told The Times that he thought it was the best way — though admittedly an imperfect one — to explain his background.
“Even though these boxes are constraining, I wanted my college application to reflect who I was,” said Mamdani, noting that he wrote in in “Ugandan” when asked to provide additional info.
This matters, of course, because at the time he applied to Columbia, the university practiced race-conscious admissions, which is a politically correct way of saying that they actively discriminated against certain applicants on the basis of race and in favor of others: Hispanic people, Black people, Native Americans, and so on. Checking the “Black or African-American” box would have earned Mamdani extra points toward admission, though as an aside, Mamdani’s application was ultimately rejected.
Conservatives are widely sharing this story on social media, claiming that it speaks to Mamdani’s character that he was deceptive about his ethnicity in order to gain an advantage. Meanwhile many Democrats think it’s a nothingburger. Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a progressive Democrat, wrote on social media that Uganda is in Africa, so it’s case closed.
To any Democrats who are tempted to align themselves with de Blasio’s thinking, I’d ask them to consider this thought experiment: Let’s say that when awarding federal contracts, the government gave special consideration on the basis of race — and a non-Black man from South Africa, when applying for the contract, checked a box claiming to be “Black or African American.” We can even give our made-up aspiring federal contractor a name: Elon Musk.
Now, I suspect Democrats would not say this was a non-story, even though South Africa is indeed a country in Africa.
All that said, I have a take that may surprise some of you: I actually don’t particularly blame Mamdani for doing this at all. That’s because ethnicity is extremely complicated. Race, on the other hand, is essentially an imaginary concept, obsessed over by exactly two kinds of people: old school racists, and the progressive elites who run college admissions departments.
If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at them — at the elite left-wing institutions that incentivize people to get creative when describing the color of their skin because false value is assigned to it. This is a practice that voters reject every time they are asked to weigh in on it, and one the Supreme Court has essentially banned as of 2023.
Robbie Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Black New Yorkers slam Zohran Mamdani over race claims on his college application )
Also on site :