‘New York Times’ Mamdani smear shows how out of touch the paper is with progressives, especially on Palestine

In a clear sign that it intends to batter Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, and disrespect the voters who have generated the leftwinger’s spectacular rise, the New York Times last week published a lengthy investigation of Mamdani’s statement about his racial identity as a college applicant in 2009 as if it had found a smoking gun. The ensuing controversy has done nothing to hurt Mamdani politically but engulfed the Times, further damaging the paper’s credibility. 

The July 3 article, titled “Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application” was based on a hack of Columbia University admissions records by a right-wing white nationalist and suggested that at 18, Mamdani lied about his identity in his 2009 application to Columbia by checking boxes stating that he was “Asian” and “Black or African-American.” Mamdani didn’t get in.

As the Times noted in gotcha style, Mamdani says on the campaign trail that he is Muslim of South Asian heritage but “claimed another label” when he was a teenager. 

“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” Mamdani explained to the Times. 

Mamdani was born in 1991 in Uganda, where his father’s Gujarati family had lived for 100 years. The budding pol spent his first 7 years in Uganda and has expressed pride in his African roots. 

The article’s gravity and length and very-thin accusation have been condemned by Mamdani supporters as a smear and a weak one, but have already predictably been picked up by pro-Israel groups that hate Mamdani and his movement.

The charge’s weakness was clear when House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who still has not endorsed Mamdani, was asked about it on MSNBC and changed the subject. He knows this is a foolish claim.  

Meanwhile, the outrage over the article has again put the Times on the defensive over its dismissive coverage of Mamdani. The paper is obviously at war with itself. Editors have sought to justify the investigation, not very convincingly, and Times columnist Jamelle Bouie posted, “i think you should tell readers if your source is a nazi.” He then deleted the post. But later posted, “NYT & many of its elite white readers are still obsessed with race-conscious college admissions,” according to Semafor. 

The investigation is absurd and malignant for several reasons.

Even if you buy the premise that Mamdani stretched his identity at 18 to try and get into Columbia, the story is laughable. We all know kids who have played up one part or another of their identity. Big deal. And anyway, the evidence is not convincing. Mamdani’s father was a professor of political science at Columbia at the time, so the admissions office likely knew who he was. Mahmood Mamdani had lately published a book, “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim,” in which he identified himself as a “third generation East African of Indian descent” who “grew up in Kampala, Uganda.” 

But no one should buy the premise here, because it is so ugly. That premise is that people have fixed racial identities, and these categories are strict. The most disturbing line in the article is this righteous bit—“asked if any of his family had intermarried while in East Africa, he said in the interview on Thursday, ‘They’re all of Indian origin, from Gujarat.’”

As if Mamdani would be a legitimate “African” if his South Asian family had mixed its blood with blacks? 

You’d think that pseudo-race science would have no place in our best newspaper. Countless Americans today have fluid identities, and we should respect their choices about what is important to them in their own backgrounds. Barack Obama made such a choice, and it was honored.  

It is hard to believe the NYT could possibly think this is a story. So yes, the motivation is clear, they were trying to make it a scandal: all you have to do is throw this out there and conservatives all over Twitter are saying he is a commie Muslim liar… 

That’s another reason the investigation is absurd. This is all they could come up with? The story doesn’t hurt Mamdani politically. His base is appalled by it, and Democratic voters don’t care, as Hakeem Jeffries has indicated. 

Jeffries is aware of the profound shifts taking place in the Democratic base that Michael Arria and Peter Feld have documented here. Jeffries knows that when Mamdani refused to apologize for defending the phrase “globalize the intifada,” the story disappeared, but that when Senator Kirsten Gillibrand revived that line of attack on WNYC by claiming that Mamdani supports jihad, she was forced to apologize for Islamophobia. 

Young Democrats are aware and somewhat radicalized, and Jeffries needs them if he is going to counter Trumpism.

The Times is out of step with that base. Of course, a newspaper gets to choose what it believes in. But the Times is the most important newspaper in the country and a generally liberal voice, and it is making grievous political and ethical errors in its coverage of a young politician who excites a wide coalition for idealistic reasons. Because he is optimistic and energetic and inclusive and offers a stirring vision for the future. 

Some day the Times is sure to reflect this American political movement. But now it is stuck by its own choice in the worst muck of the Israel lobby. 

The core issue here is Israel. The young are mobilized by the horror of the Gaza genocide. The Democratic base demands that its leaders express their outrage at Israel’s rolling massacres and stop sending arms to war criminals. 

The Times has pointedly refused to honor that point of view. The Times’s acceptance of the genocide is best captured by a piece by Nicholas Kristof, a liberal columnist at the paper, when he wrote in April, “the Netanyahu government is now again escalating in Gaza. Is this really the best use of American weaponry?”

Is this really the best use of American weaponry? This is a morally idiotic question. We know the answer, have known it for years, and we want our journals, intellectuals, and leaders to say emphatically: No.

Thanks to Donald Johnson