New York City’s Democratic Mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani does not consider himself to be black — but that did not stop him from checking the “African-American” box in addition to the “Asian” box on his application to attend Columbia University.
The New York Times revealed the information — discovered through a hack of the university and then shared with the outlet — in a report published on Thursday afternoon, just ahead of the July 4th holiday weekend.
Though both of his parents are of Indian descent, Mamdani was born in Uganda and spent his early childhood there. He has said that he considers himself “an American who was born in Africa,” not black or African American — and instead, he has leaned in to his South Asian ancestry and his Muslim faith.
“As the first South Asian elected official, the first Muslim elected official to ever run for mayor, the turnout in those same communities has been incredible to see,” he said after besting disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the primary.
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But, as the hacked data revealed, he did consider himself African American for the purpose of his application to Columbia — and he admitted he’d done the same on other college applications. His explanation was that the available selections did not paint a complete picture of who he was.
“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” he said. “Even though these boxes are constraining, I wanted my college application to reflect who I was.”
The Times even appeared to cast doubt on Mamdani’s motivation:
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.
In addition, the Times pressed Mamdani on whether he’d ever identified as African American on any other occasion: “The Times could not find any speeches or interviews in which Mr. Mamdani referred to himself as Black or African American.” Mamdani said that outside of college applications, he could not recall ever doing so.
