When he was 17, Zohran Mamdani did what any teenager with a plausible claim to African identity might have done to get into Columbia: he checked both “Asian” and “African American” on his application.
For that, Mamdani, of Indian extraction but born in Uganda, is being accused of “pretending to be Black.” The backlash has come largely from the right. Fox jumped at the chance to bash the soon-to-be mayor, calling him a “racist” and citing the event as evidence that he “clearly despises America and everything that [it stands] for.”
Mayor Eric Adams called Mamdani’s racial identification “deeply offensive.” Andrew Cuomo’s people, who are, of course, the paragons of moral integrity, warned this might be “the tip of the iceberg” of some deeper intellectual fraud.
It’s funny, because Mamdani is, in some sense, all of those things. But to suggest that this particular college application box debacle is the almighty smoking gun would be incoherent and all too hypocritical.
Most of the voices now howling about Mamdani’s supposed dishonesty were just two years ago fervently denouncing affirmative action, blanket preference of marginalized groups in admissions, as discriminatory. So what, exactly, is their objection to someone navigating that system strategically? If the policy itself was unjust, then exploiting its flaws has to be a rational decision.
Of course, Mamdani’s politically correct explanation hasn’t exactly reassured anyone beyond his base. “Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian Ugandans,” he said. “So I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background. Even though these boxes are constraining, I want my college application to reflect who I was.”
The fullness of his background? He was 17 and trying to get into Columbia. He knew then, and he certainly knows now, even after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in admissions, that identifying as Black on a college application gives you an advantage. You get bonus points. It’s easier to get in. Thus, setting his own implausible explanation aside, teenage Mamdani’s decision makes sense.
He was born in Uganda, and his family later moved to South Africa before immigrating to the U.S. That gives him a plausible de jure claim to the African American label, and he identified himself accordingly. Whether that qualifies him, in any cultural or historical sense, as “African American” is debatable, but the college admissions process doesn’t care much.
And Mamdani had a practical reason: his SAT score, as reported by Christopher Rufo, was below the typical threshold for Asian admits but higher than the average for Black applicants at Columbia at the time. So he checked the box.
That’s not a scandal. The 17-year-old Mamdani responded rationally to a system that was openly perverse.
Understandably, he can’t exactly admit that he was trying to get admissions points without getting booed off the stage at his next campaign rally. But maybe the rest of us should. Because the question is: If I had been Mamdani, would I have done the same? And if I believed the policy was structurally unjust, wouldn’t my actions have been a logical choice — even a moral choice?
My answer to both is a resounding yes. If anything, Mamdani’s Columbia application shows he wasn’t always some doctrinaire radical. He was once a student capable of making normal human decisions. To judge him as if he were already a politician at that time is a ludicrous premise. And above all, if one believes that the racial preferences the government enforced for decades were unjust, why attack a teenager responding strategically to that unfair process?
To subvert a discriminatory policy is itself an indictment of that policy. Conservatives should be celebrating the young Mamdani for having had the gumption to do so.
Yes, Mamdani is a left-wing radical and socialist. He wants fare-free transit, government-run grocery stores, and to tax the rich until they flee the city. He has floated a rent freeze, a move that would absolutely worsen New York’s housing shortage. He won’t condemn terrorism, he supports race-based redistribution, and he has backed defunding the police department.
There are many good reasons to oppose Mamdani touching on policy, competence, and judgment. He’s an easy target. But this? This is the weakest possible attack. For this, he deserves praise.
Conservatives grabbing their pitchforks and getting ready to explode over how offensive this is are being hypocrites, both morally and intellectually. If race-based admissions really are unjust, then it is unfair and dishonest to censure the people who worked the system in their own favor. Put down the sticks, grab some popcorn, and join the rest of us awaiting New York’s descent into total farce.
William Liang is a writer based in San Francisco.
