11/07/2025
When your racial identity is more important than your goals for leading….great piece from NPR's Code Switch:
Fam,
You’ve surely heard the Cinderella-story by now: A couple of weeks ago, Zohran Mamdani took the country by surprise when he won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. Mamdani was considered a long-shot — a 33-year-old, relatively unknown Democratic socialist who relied on social media and door-knocking to get his platform out there . But many New Yorkers saw him as a refreshing voice of hope — someone who wasn’t afraid to run on a platform far more progressive than most New York Democrats. And those people turned out on election day.
Seeing how excited many people were about the primary results, I wondered: How long would it be before folks started trying to undermine Mamdani’s popularity based on his ethnic background? Because let’s be honest — that train is never late.
Choo choo! Almost immediately, Mamdani was subjected to racist and Islamophobic attacks, including from prominent Republican politicians. The Trump administration even floated the possibility of stripping Mamdani of his U.S. citizenship. And not long after, he was scrutinized for how he identified ethnically on his college applications. ( Explanatory comma: Mamdani is of South Asian descent, and was born in Uganda, where he has citizenship. His father’s family has lived in East Africa for generations, and Mamdani lived in Uganda and then South Africa, until he moved to the U.S. at 7 years old. Eventually he became a U.S. citizen, while retaining his Ugandan citizenship. And, apparently, when applying to college, he checked boxes for both Asian and African American , and then clarified that he was Ugandan. In a recent interview, he explained that he knew those selections didn’t perfectly reflect his identity, but it was the best he could do with the options he had.)
If you’re wondering how all this college application stuff came up, it’s because, according to Columbia University, someone hacked their admissions database. That person, later identified as someone with well-established white supremacist views, reportedly offered the tidbit about Mamdani to the New York Times under the condition of anonymity. And if you’re wondering what it has to do with Mamdani’s candidacy for mayor, you’re in good company.
But, no matter. Because the reality is, very frequently, when someone gets to a prominent enough position in politics (or really, anywhere in U.S. society), the “great unpacking” of their identity begins. Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are obvious examples: Obama was subjected to years of discussion about whether he was Black enough, or too Black, or Black at all, or even American. Harris got much of the same treatment, with additional scrutiny about whether she was South Asian enough, or too South Asian, or wrongly South Asian.
But they’re not the only examples. Bernie Sanders is often asked to defend his Jewish bonafides. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have both tried hard to prove that they’re just the right amount of Latino. And long before he was a national figure, Cory Booker was fielding questions about “where he was really from,” given his “pale green eyes, shaved head and light skin,” and “chiseled good looks.”
So in a way, the scrutiny surrounding Mamdani could be taken as a good omen for his political future. The attention on his background seems to suggest that people are starting to think of him as a real threat. And isn’t there a saying, “You haven’t really made it until someone is digging into your genealogy to unearth some dirt on your racial background?” No? Well, there should be.
-Leah Donnella, senior editor
-Christian Monterrosa/Bloomberg via Getty Images
