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New York Times hits an abysmal low with hit piece on Mamdani's college application [1]
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Date: 2025-07-03
Wow. Just, wow. You could just taste the disappointment of the New York Times as the mayoral primary results came in last week, but this is just...appalling.
As he runs for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has made his identity as a Muslim immigrant of South Asian descent a key part of his appeal. But as a high school senior in 2009, Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, claimed another label when he applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times. Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.
Well, I’ll make a confession here. If I was born in Uganda, and my Dad came from Uganda, from a family that had been there for a hundred years, and if I was an 18 year-old “high school senior,” having moved to America at age 7, and I was faced to check off multiple boxes on a college application listing five choices about my “Ethnicity/Race” background, and if I was being asked to describe that background, I most certainly would check several boxes, including one that lists me as “Black or African-American.” Because that would be the reality, as I understood it.
And if I was a news reporter in the year 2025 — or more importantly, as an editor of the leading news outlet in the United States — I’d hesitate to run with a story with this type of subheading:
Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat running for mayor of New York City, was born in Uganda. He doesn’t consider himself Black but said the application didn’t allow for the complexity of his background.
“He doesn’t consider himself “Black.” Well thanks for the clarity, New York Times. Especially when the research for the article included this little nugget, buried deep within the body of the story.
Mr. Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, to Mira Nair, an acclaimed film director who grew up in India and later emigrated to the United States, and Mahmood Mamdani, then a college professor at Makerere University. Both his parents are of Indian descent, but his father’s family came to East Africa more than 100 years ago, Mr. Mamdani said.
Well, “OMG.”
The article is being ratioed into the gates of Hell (as it should). It is being absolutely roasted in the reader comments, except for the usual right-wing trolls or their cheerleaders in Saint Petersburg. I guess the only excuse the Times could offer was that it was trying to “clarify” the record to get “in front” of the story.
But I’m not buying that, and no one else should. This story, as it leads, frankly looks like sour grapes, and an effort to smear Mamdani to the Black community, with the ultimate goal of tilting the election against him.
One commenter:
This is insanely low, racist, and desperate. Glad to see they’ve just decided to be a tabloid. It sounds like he clarified it well enough with writing in “Ugandan.” Truly insane (and just unacceptable) that this was framed like this. Or reported at all! Who cares!
Another comment:
This really does not feel newsworthy, when you see he made his best effort to clarify the check-box identity markers he was offered.
And another one:
He was not admitted to Columbia so I’m confused why this is a story. I’d like to think America is a beautiful place where we have tons of people with complex identities. This should be celebrated rather than vilified and it’s alarming that a eugenics proponent had involvement in gathering this data. There are so many more important things to report than this non-story.
Well, it won’t work. That’s some comfort.
But it’s so instructive, isn’t it?
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/3/2331589/-New-York-Times-hits-an-abysmal-low-with-hit-piece-on-Mamdani-s-college-application?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
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