Will Stancil Defends Zohran Mamdani's Blackness

How was the Asian kid supposed to grasp that in America his mom's leading man, Denzel Washington, is "African American" but he isn't?

Will Stancil tweets in defense of NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani checking the “Black or African American” race box on his college applications:

Part of the reason race drives people insane is that they're trying to create some kind of logically complete racial taxonomy and it CANNOT BE DONE. "Race" in the US is a bunch of loose social groupings associated with appearance, ancestry, national origin, religion, language

These categories roughly reflect social groups that exist on the ground but they NEVER, and CANNOT, work around the edges. All racial taxonomies break apart when you look at the edges, because they're just trying to capture big fuzzy social groupings at the highest level

It's important to collect demographic data but you will get many many cases (such as the fact that a lot of people migrated to Africa from Gujarat and identify as "African") that will confound whatever clean categories you set up. That's a defect of the taxonomy, not the people …

People from Mamdani's community in Africa identify as African. So what are they supposed to do when they encounter a form that has "Black or African-American" and NO OTHER AFRICAN OPTIONS?

They check a bunch of different stuff, like "African" and "Asian," which is what he did.

Yes, but the grievances of Indians in Africa against Indians in India over which Indians will marry which Indians is not why American colleges ask about race. It’s to hand out affirmative action to some races, especially sub-Saharans, and to deny it to others, especially Asians. Everybody knows the most privileged race box to check is “Black or African American,” which is why this ambitious young fellow, who is now running for mayor of New York City at age 33, checked it.

“African American” is not there for Elon Musk or Zohran Mamdani to check, it’s just there as a synonym for “black,” the way “Negro” was on the Census up through 2000:

That really isn’t too complicated to know.

Will goes on:

What I find so insane about this is how people are simply not smart enough to put themselves in someone else's shoes, and instead assume the US racial categories and codes - such as African-American meaning EXCLUSIVELY black people, not people from Africa - fit for everyone.

Some of you desperately need to talk to someone from another country. They'll tell you, US categories are often a poor fit for them and when they're asked to describe their background they throw up a mess of different answers.

But, his supporters like Stancil ask, how was a 17 year old Bronx Science student who had been living in America for 10 years, whose Columbia professor dad writes books on race and identity, whose mother directed Denzel Washington in a movie about race in the modern American South:

supposed to be able to understand a complex concept like, “Sorry, kid. In America, Denzel is ‘black or African American.’ You aren’t ‘black or African American’”?

Honestly, the whole world knows about American racial categories.

Bertolt Brecht, East Berlin, 1948 (nah, it’s Mamdani’s dad)

I expect Mamdani supporters to soon suggest that the 1899 children’s book Little Black Sambo confused Mamdani, whose dad looks like a more Aryan version of Congressman Barney Frank, about his race:

You see, tigers don’t live in Africa, they live in India, so Sambo must be Indian. But he’s black! How can a Columbia applicant not be so baffled that he checks the race box that comes with the most affirmative action Pokemon points?

And indeed, Brits and Australians used to tend to call everybody from, roughly, Calais southward “black,” until American racial terms conquered the world.

Although they are not a good excuse for Mamdani, in general, Stancil’s complaints about racial categories for affirmative action tend to be somewhat true. Indeed affirmative action will increasingly be bedeviled by more and more ridiculous edge cases, such as if your great-grandfather was a Freudian psychoanalyst in Buenos Aires, should you get affirmative action in America for being 1/8th Hispanic?

That’s one reason (among many) why the Trump Administration can be on the warpath against racial preferences with surprisingly little backlash so far.

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