On the “fruit of the poisoned tree” aspect, I think I see two points that are a bit different. One is that only unusual cases will have these bits of “inadmissible” evidence dug up and brought out, but many people have this same sort of evidence that remains hidden, so that using it for all and only the people that have it dug up will lead to a misleading impression of those individuals. Another is that we want our epistemic practices to discourage bad practices on the part of others and not just produce good epistemic outcomes for ourselves, so we should have a practice of ignoring this evidence in order to dissuade people from doing the dirty work of digging it up.
My interpretation of the law was always about the second (particularly since the dirty digging is done by the party that has something to gain from the court finding in their favor). But I suspect that outside legal contexts, you have to lean more on the first.
In this case, if the worst they’ve dug up on him is that he checked off this technically accurate but highly misleading box while applying to college, that seems like no more than you can find on most people.
In any case, it looks like he wasn’t accepted to Columbia! (Though I wonder if he did the same thing on other applications? And I wonder if Elon Musk has checked off “African-American” for any government contracts that care about minority owned businesses?)
My understanding is that the Gujarati African community from which he claims African descent broadly understands _itself_ as being African in a real way, and is often discriminated against by other South Asian communities, in a way that pretty strongly resembles the "one drop" theory of Blackness in the Jim Crow South. That is, you could be a merchant-caste Hindu whose family did very well in the import/export trade in Uganda, but if you try to move back to Gujarat, a marriage broker will have a lot of trouble finding any locals that are willing to agree to a match, without a distortion in the dowry value, because your family line is under suspicion for being tainted with Black African blood. The existence of this kind of revulsion towards Indian / African relationships is what made Mamdani's mother Mira Nair's film Mississippi Masala controversial in the Indian diaspora when it came out.
This remark seems like it is refusing to engage with the entire point of the original post here. Questions of identity are complicated. I agree that in the context the question was being answered, it is weird / probably "wrong" or "unfair" for an American citizen of partial Gujarati-Ugandan origin to identify as "African American". They're giving an answer to a different question from what was asked. But there is a real sense in which they're giving an answer that is true to how they think about themself.
"African American", in American English, is a term that Jesse Jackson popularized to refer to American citizens of sub-Saharan African descent. It replaced the previously widespread term "N***o", which is now considered taboo. Everyone in the United States knows that Charlize Theron, for example, is not an "African American". It also does not refer to "merchant-caste Hindu"s who "will have a lot of trouble finding any locals that are willing to agree to a match" in Gujarat. In American English, it refers to black Americans. At Columbia University, people speak and use American English. People who do not understand this are ignorant. People who act as though they do not understand this, although they do, are dishonest.
In this case both apply anyway since the hacker makes no secret of his political interests — he has a clear interest in making sure Cuomo wins the general election (Adams as a distant second — second because of ideological alignment, distant because he’s Black).
Cremieux’s observation strikes me as correct. If you’ve grown up in America you should certainly understand what “African-American” means.
Anyway, the whole thing seems like something of a nothingburger. It would probably be more productive to ask whether a system where so much depends on which box one decides (or not) to check is a good idea or not.
hes a communist and a globalist, doesnt matter his race at this point, hes no different than white republicans pretending to care about this country and its legacy and history. They all work for the same lizard people
On the “fruit of the poisoned tree” aspect, I think I see two points that are a bit different. One is that only unusual cases will have these bits of “inadmissible” evidence dug up and brought out, but many people have this same sort of evidence that remains hidden, so that using it for all and only the people that have it dug up will lead to a misleading impression of those individuals. Another is that we want our epistemic practices to discourage bad practices on the part of others and not just produce good epistemic outcomes for ourselves, so we should have a practice of ignoring this evidence in order to dissuade people from doing the dirty work of digging it up.
My interpretation of the law was always about the second (particularly since the dirty digging is done by the party that has something to gain from the court finding in their favor). But I suspect that outside legal contexts, you have to lean more on the first.
In this case, if the worst they’ve dug up on him is that he checked off this technically accurate but highly misleading box while applying to college, that seems like no more than you can find on most people.
In any case, it looks like he wasn’t accepted to Columbia! (Though I wonder if he did the same thing on other applications? And I wonder if Elon Musk has checked off “African-American” for any government contracts that care about minority owned businesses?)
My understanding is that the Gujarati African community from which he claims African descent broadly understands _itself_ as being African in a real way, and is often discriminated against by other South Asian communities, in a way that pretty strongly resembles the "one drop" theory of Blackness in the Jim Crow South. That is, you could be a merchant-caste Hindu whose family did very well in the import/export trade in Uganda, but if you try to move back to Gujarat, a marriage broker will have a lot of trouble finding any locals that are willing to agree to a match, without a distortion in the dowry value, because your family line is under suspicion for being tainted with Black African blood. The existence of this kind of revulsion towards Indian / African relationships is what made Mamdani's mother Mira Nair's film Mississippi Masala controversial in the Indian diaspora when it came out.
That’s all very interesting, but Columbia University is located in the United States, not in Gujarat.
This remark seems like it is refusing to engage with the entire point of the original post here. Questions of identity are complicated. I agree that in the context the question was being answered, it is weird / probably "wrong" or "unfair" for an American citizen of partial Gujarati-Ugandan origin to identify as "African American". They're giving an answer to a different question from what was asked. But there is a real sense in which they're giving an answer that is true to how they think about themself.
"African American", in American English, is a term that Jesse Jackson popularized to refer to American citizens of sub-Saharan African descent. It replaced the previously widespread term "N***o", which is now considered taboo. Everyone in the United States knows that Charlize Theron, for example, is not an "African American". It also does not refer to "merchant-caste Hindu"s who "will have a lot of trouble finding any locals that are willing to agree to a match" in Gujarat. In American English, it refers to black Americans. At Columbia University, people speak and use American English. People who do not understand this are ignorant. People who act as though they do not understand this, although they do, are dishonest.
In this case both apply anyway since the hacker makes no secret of his political interests — he has a clear interest in making sure Cuomo wins the general election (Adams as a distant second — second because of ideological alignment, distant because he’s Black).
Cremieux’s observation strikes me as correct. If you’ve grown up in America you should certainly understand what “African-American” means.
Anyway, the whole thing seems like something of a nothingburger. It would probably be more productive to ask whether a system where so much depends on which box one decides (or not) to check is a good idea or not.
hes a communist and a globalist, doesnt matter his race at this point, hes no different than white republicans pretending to care about this country and its legacy and history. They all work for the same lizard people
Excited for back to back black NYC mayors