Zohran Mamdani is just another privileged progressive hypocrite

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee in New York City’s mayoral race, has been outed for checking the “African American” box on his 2009 application to Columbia University — and he’s just one of many progressive hypocrites eager to shortchange the underprivileged.

When college application season comes around, limousine liberals eagerly throw their morals out the window. Affirmative action, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2023, was designed to give a leg up to the truly underserved, but has been gamed by privileged kids who have mastered the art of masquerading as underprivileged. 

In the cut-throat world of selective college admissions, anything goes … including fudging your racial identity.

We can’t crawl into teenage Mamdani’s head when he checked the “African American” box, but I’m betting he knew that it certainly wouldn’t hurt his admissions odds.

Yes, it’s true that Mamdani, who is of Indian descent, was born in Uganda, where his father’s family had lived for several generations. But, let’s be real: Every American in their right mind knows that does not make him African-American in the American conception of race. 

One can’t even argue that “African American” fits because he is African and American. Mamdani wasn’t even yet an American citizen when he applied to college in 2009.

His case might prove that our racial categories are too simplistic, but it’s pretty clear that the African-American box was not the best possible option — it was the most expedient one.

The scandal is part of a frustrating larger trend among privileged elites. For all their handwringing and virtue signaling about oppression, many are perfectly willing to shortchange the lesser fortunate for their own gain.

I graduated from the Lawrenceville School, a prep school in New Jersey that sends about a third of its students to Ivy League universities every year, and I saw firsthand the games people play to convince admissions officers they’re oppressed.

A big one: How can you make your place in life look as unfortunate as possible?

Students who didn’t fit into what could be considered, from an admissions perspective, an “advantageous” group, often contorted their identities by writing about their life’s biggest struggle in college admissions essays, or emphasizing their membership in a “disadvantaged” class — like how they’re gay or a child of divorce — on their applications.

The Common Application platform, which is used by most colleges and universities, even tees up students for an oppression essay with the following prompt: “The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?”

Lawrenceville was also a place where exceptionally wealthy and privileged students of color benefited from affirmative action policies, likely displacing less fortunate non-white students for whom those policies were actually designed.

Not to mention, affirmative action was conceived to help mend some of the wounds left behind by the legacy of slavery. It was a well-meaning attempt to rectify historical sins. But many of the students benefiting from affirmative action today are not the descendants of slaves, including the “African American” Mamdani.

Even if you squinted hard enough and agreed that Mamdani is somehow “African American,” he’s hardly the type who needed a leg up from affirmative action. His father is a Columbia university president (who ironically lists “race” as one of his research interests) and his mother is an Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated filmmaker.

The college admissions oppression Olympics is a whole bunch of hypocrisy that shortchanges the truly underserved. 

Many of these same students — and their parents, and the college counselors and teachers who help craft their sob story essays — would surely consider themselves good progressives. 

But when it comes to college apps? They have no problem directly stealing from the truly marginalized if that means getting an admissions letter from the fancy university of their dreams.