This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Professor Mamdani, of course, it’s a matter of the most remarkable coincidence that this book, Slow Poison, was published just as your son was on the precipice of his electoral victory as mayor of New York City. You’d been working on the book, of course, for years and years. But some of the themes in the book have special resonance in this moment for Zohran in New York City, namely, the points you make in the book about how racial, ethnic and religious minorities come to occupy political positions in the context of majority exclusionary polities. So, if you could talk about that in the context of New York City and your son’s victory?
MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, being a minority, we all know that being a minority is — brings with it disprivileges, brings with it privations. But also, being a minority brings with it a certain privileged perspective. You are never fully part of the society that you live in, and you are never considered fully a part of that society. So, you are, in some sense, what W. E. B. Du Bois called a target of double consciousness. You’re part of it, and yet you have a critical eye on it. And this is what gifted individuals from minority positions have been able to utilize to mobilize against the downside of this position.
AMY GOODMAN: So, your son, Zohran Kwame Mamdani, named for the first prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, of an independent Ghana, will become the first South Asian mayor of New York, the first Muslim mayor of New York and the youngest in a century. In your 2020 book, Neither Settler nor Native, you wrote the dedication for Zohran: “You teach us how to engage the world in difficult times. May you inspire many and blaze a trail!” How prophetic! I was wondering if we could end, Professor Mamdani, with your advice to parents?
MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, let me just make a small correction: He is not the first South Asian mayor of New York; he is the first African mayor of New York of South Asian descent. I found it very interesting to hear how different groups of people in this country, different observers, different commentators, trace his roots very selectively, whether as South Asian or as Muslim or as African. He’s all of these. So, the advice, my advice to parents, is learn from your kids. Be open to change.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Professor Mamdani, you’ve talked about the importance, the urgency, in fact, of having leaders whose supporters are united around a set of issues rather than around an individual. You’ve said, in fact, that the right has been more successful at this than the left. But now with your son’s victory, with Zohran’s victory, whose entire campaign was focused on one issue precisely, on affordability, do you think this indicates a shift and a recognition on the part of the left and of progressives that one should focus on issues rather than individuals?
MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, I would say Zohran’s entire campaign was focused on two issues. Affordability was one. A critique of the state of Israel was another. And his refusal to budge, to soften his critique of the state of Israel, even in the face of millions of dollars being pumped against him, even in the face of big personalities, including the president of the United States, coming out against him, his refusal to change his stand, convinced the electorate that this was a man of principle, that affordability was not just merely rhetoric, that he could be taken seriously at his word. So, it’s this combination that made for the success Zohran has enjoyed so far.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, your next book, Mahmood Mamdani, is on Israel-Palestine. We look forward to reading it. And we’re going to go to a break now and then go to Gaza for the latest news. Mahmood Mamdani, we want to thank you for being with us, professor at Columbia University, author of the new book Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State, also the father of the Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Coming up, we go to Gaza, in 20 seconds.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Wa Ana Amshi,” “As I Walk,” written by the Lebanese musical composer Marcel Khalife, performed right here in New York by the New York City Palestinian Youth Choir.
