'Binary thinking': Why Zohran Mamdani's African identity doesn't fit US racial boxes

Amid the trees clustered with jackfruit and the boda boda motorcycles weaving precariously around Kampala’s congested roads earlier this year was a campaign poster for Katongole Singh, an immaculately coiffed candidate who positively beamed alongside the president, Yoweri Museveni.

With a Sikh Indian surname and an indigenous Ugandan first name, Singh is no rarity in the Ugandan capital, where people of Indian descent have lived for more than 125 years. Many people here boast a multi-hyphenated “African Indian” identity – as indeed does Zohran Kwame Mamdani, the 33-year-old running for mayor of New York City.

Mamdani – who made shock waves this summer when he defeated Andrew Cuomo to win the Democratic primary, setting himself up for a likely victory in the mayoral race this November – was born in Uganda, and moved to New York when he was a young boy. In July Mamdani even returned here for his marriage ceremony, a sprawling three-day affair in Kampala.

The same month, the New York Times reported that an anonymous source – alleged to be Jordan Lasker, a well-known eugenicist and neo-Nazi – had hacked internal data showing that on an application to Columbia University in 2009, Mamdani had identified his race as both “Asian” and “Black or African American”.
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In Kampala, however, it is clear that Ugandans of Indian descent are unquestioningly considered African – both by Black indigenous Ugandans and by themselves.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/10/zohran-mamdani-uganda

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