The New York Times and its City Hall reporter Jeffery C. Mays attacked new Mayor Zohran Mamdani for not putting enough "affirmative action" in his new administration. Blacks make up about 23 percent of the population of New York City, so they expect him to be quota-conscious. The headline for this lecture:  None of Mamdani’s Deputy Mayors Are Black. It Has Become a Problem. Some Black and Latino leaders worry they are being denied access to power under Mayor Zohran Mamdani and that they may lose the ground they had gained under former Mayor Eric Adams. Mays lamented that "in his rollout as mayor, Mr. Mamdani has appointed five deputy mayors, none of them Black; one was Latino." Oh sure, Mamdani "announced Afua Atta-Mensah, who led his campaign outreach to Black voters, as the new chief equity officer and commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice" and "reaffirmed his commitment to releasing a long overdue and mandated plan to address racial disparities in New York City." But as a man of color, he's not doing enough for the capital-B black people:  The moves were welcomed by Black and Latino leaders, but they still questioned Mr. Mamdani’s commitment to racial equity. Tyquana Henderson-Rivers, a well-known Black political consultant, said in an interview that she believed it was “damaging that there’s no Black deputy mayor.” “He already doesn’t have the best relationship with the Black community,” she said. “And it seems like he’s not interested in us because there’s no representation in his kitchen cabinet.” Mays pointed out that Mamdani’s Democrat predecessors Eric Adams and Bill DeBlasio did better, and then more complaints: “For someone who prides himself on being directly engaged with everyday New Yorkers, to be so tone deaf to the cries of Black and Latinos in the city for access to power is shocking,” said Kirsten John Foy, the president of the civil rights group Arc of Justice. “There are some very good people of color that have been appointed to some high-level positions, but those people are not at the center of the decision-making apparatus in this city.” Dora Pekec, a spokeswoman for the new mayor, said there's been diversity. "Out of 32 appointees so far, 18 have been Asian American, Latino, Middle Eastern or Black, she said." Apparently, only blacks are the real "people of color" who uniquely define "diversity." The best part is how the black leftists don't like Mamdani's radical network, "as if race doesn't matter." “It is acting out what Black people don’t like about the D.S.A.,” Ms. Henderson-Rivers said of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mr. Mamdani is a member. “And that’s acting as if race doesn’t matter.” Kyle Bragg, the former head of the powerful union Local 32BJ, wrote on Facebook that the Mamdani administration was the first in decades to not appoint a Black deputy mayor. He also attributed the lack of diversity to the “D.S.A.-aligned politics” of the left, where issues of class are given more weight than race. Mays brought in leaders of both the NAACP and the National Urban League to pile on Mamdani's inadequacies. Suddenly, Mayor Eric Adams doesn't look quite so bad to these fervent bean-counters. 

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