For those wondering what New York’s social democrat mayor has actually been doing since taking office in January, Zohran Mamdani provided an answer this week. His staff has been reviewing every single city service, and indeed the city’s history since its founding, through the lens of racial equity.
The mayor’s office on Monday released a report titled “New York City Preliminary Racial Equity Plan.” New York’s city council mandated racial equity reports in 2022 in response to the 2020 death of George Floyd and the spasmodic racial reckoning that followed. But the supposedly mandatory reports were ignored by the previous mayor Eric Adams, a black former police officer who was less devoted than his successor to a left-wing view of race relations.
Mamdani’s City Hall is compensating for that oversight, to say the least. The report identifies a history of race-related problems that must now be addressed in every city department, from garbage collection (“disparities in cleanliness and environmental safety”) to the “Office of Media and Entertainment,” in which, we are told, “systemic racism continues to shape both representation and opportunities.”
For benighted New Yorkers who take pride in the city’s history of allowing immigrants of all backgrounds to improve their lot, the mayor offers a correction. “New York’s history has been one of colonization, exploitation, and racial oppression,” the report says. “The land New York City stands on today once belonged to the Lenape people, who were forcibly displaced through settler colonialism. From the era of Dutch colonization to modern times, systemic racism has shaped the experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latine, Asian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, and other communities of color.” (Note the absence on that list of Jews who, prior to a 1948 Supreme Court decision, were targeted by deed restrictions that barred “Hebrews.”)
