WHEN I moved to the US in 2016 for graduate school there were two things I struggled with: understanding how health insurance works and understanding why I had to list my race on all kinds of forms. I understand the US government collects racialdatafor census purposes and to create policies or ensure (ahem) racial equality but it was really fascinating how often it showed up. One time, at a Chicago food festival, a member from the organisation asked me to answer some questions about their event which ended with `how do you identify?` I was two months into the programme so Pd say Asian before they completed the question.

`You don`t look Asian,` he told me.

`What do I look like?` I asked a perennial favourite question of mine to people who have a certain image of what Pakistanis look like.

`You look Middle Eastern,` he replied after some thought. I asked what he identified as; he said he was LatinX this was the trend that year to describe Latino with an X so I said someone the day before had asked if I was Hispanic.

`Oh yeah, I guess you could be Hispanic, too. That`s white. So is Middle Eastern,` he explained.

This was how I learned the complications of race identification. In the classroom I learned how Arab Christians who arrived in the US in the 19th century won legal battles to change their racial classification from Asian to Caucasian. The Middle Eastern and North African category was only added in 2024.

This was my first time as a student on a year-long programme in the US, which coincided with Donald Trump becoming president. It was the age of identity politics on campus, everything came with a trigger warning. It was also clear that there would be a fierce rejection to identity politics and something more dangerous in terms of ideological divides would emerge.

I was reminded of this while following the media coverage of Zohran Mamdani, the presumptive mayor of New York City.

His victory is a fascinating insight to what an effective, clear-headed media strategy can do. Mamdani really was the dark horse he was polling at 1pc in February but he captured many New Yorkers` imagination, especially with his anti-elite, antiZionist messaging. As a side note: I would really urge the PML-N government to read/watch all the pundits who have dissected Mamdani`s campaign and learn from it, because they need the help. To threaten to arrest Imran Khan`s sons, who I doubt planned to come to Pakistan, is the dumbest thing Pye heard them say.I digress. Mamdani`s victory reflects a seismic shift not just in Democratic politics but in left politics too. Of course it will cause discomfort and a story in The New York Times is evidence of how even legacy media is getting it wrong (again).

I`m referring to the (non) story about Mamdani identifying as both black or African descent and Asian in his 2009 college application to Columbia. He did this as a son of a Ugandan man and Indian mother. The application allowed him to choose the two options. That doesn`t seem to be the problem. TheNew York Times` primary source was a stolen document from a hack at the university. It was provided to the paper by an intermediary known as Cremieux on Substack who, it emerged, is the social media alias of Jordan Lasker, a white supremacist. The paper offered him anonymity, referred to him as an academic and when his identity was revealed, updated the story to say Cremieux writes on race and identity.

It is highly unethical to use stolen docu-ments as a source.

Especially when earlier the NYT reported on how it chose not to publish Trump campaign documents about J.D. Vance as it said they were stolen by Iran-backed hackers. That was a bigger story than this.

It is not the same as WikiLeaks, which sheds lieht on insti-tutional corruption for the public good.

The NYT story on Mamdani`s failed college application can hardly be described as a scoop. They published it because they did not want to be out-scooped by other reporters. It`s almost as if all the reporters just learned that people can identify with several racial identities. At least 33m Americans identified with two or more races in the 2020 census. Why was Mamdani treated differently? We know the answer too well. He is a Muslim, for starters. He criticises Israel, the far right in India, billionaires and Modi. He says he will arrest Netanyahu.

Everyone knows Israel is the US` red line.

Mamdani crossed it and still received support. The backlash and outcry to the story has been intense and hopefully will prompt all papers to rethink what is newsworthy and if fascists should be considered reliable sources. • The wnter is a joumalism instructor.

X: @Ledeing Lady