The troubling part of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly unveiled Racial Equity Plan is its pledge to tackle racial “disparities” while appearing to misread what drives them — and to lean toward a deeply divisive remedy: race-based favoritism.
The more reassuring part, judging from both the proposal itself and Mamdani’s political track record, is that there is little evidence he will be able to turn those sweeping promises into reality.
At the heart of the debate is a basic American ideal: the country was built around equal opportunity, not guaranteed equal results. Expecting identical outcomes across groups, despite major differences in individual choices, circumstances and effort, reflects the kind of utopian thinking often associated with socialist politics.
That mindset can lead policymakers toward measures that are unfair, legally questionable and unlikely to solve the very inequities they claim to address.
It is worth remembering that the great civil rights victories in the United States were rooted in the fight for equal rights under the law — first for Black Americans and other racial minorities, and later for women — not in a demand that government engineer equal outcomes.
Equal opportunity was, is and always should be the ideal.
The Mamdani plan’s main mistake is that it assumes racial disparities are chiefly the result of “historical harm” — never mind that slavery ended 160 years and the civil-rights reforms rolled back most official racist policies more than 60 years ago.
Indeed, the plan sees “systemic racism” sewn into the fabric of the city’s history, governance and policies.
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And then hints of addressing disparities by giving minorities an edge, in one form or another.
Fortunately, except in a few places, the report offers little meat on the bones for achieving that. It largely calls for studies, recommendations, data, etc. — as opposed to actual, immediate, concrete changes.
Unfortunately, where there is meat, it’s rancid. When it comes to “racial equity” goals set by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, for example, Naomi Schaefer Riley fumes that “reducing racial inequity trumps reducing abuse and neglect” of kids “every time.”
ACS’s emphasis on race-based approaches “will only put more children, of all races, in grave danger.”
The plan also aims to expand race-based contracting, which is unconstitutional and undermines fair, unbiased competitive bidding. The government shouldn’t combat “racial disparities” by discriminating in favor supposedly “harmed” racial groups.
Thank goodness Mamdani is generally more interested in symbols than results, as is clear from his promises for government-run grocery stores, free buses, universal child care and more.
Equity hustlers like him, who traffic in the fiction of equal outcomes, are mainly looking to profit politically from the resentments their false claims and hollow promises stoke.
Let’s hope that’s the worst of the damage his plan causes.