Mamdani, Dimon Offer Clashing Visions of New York City—And America at 250

For contrast, the timing couldn’t have been better. Two of the most prominent New Yorkers this week released documents outlining starkly different visions of America’s future and perceptions of its past.

After reading New York City’s 375-page "Preliminary Racial Equity Plan" issued by the city’s 34-year-old socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and then reading the 48-page annual shareholder letter from the 70-year-old CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, it’s hard to believe that the two men are describing the same planet, let alone the same country and city.

Both men are racing to define America’s past in its 250th anniversary year. For Dimon, a big danger is that Americans lose faith in our country. "While we should acknowledge America’s flaws, they should not be used to pull apart our country. We need to believe in ourselves and get back to work, not tear each other down," Dimon writes.

For Mamdani and his "Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice," a big danger is overlooking what the report calls "historical harms" and how "New York City’s past is deeply intertwined with the structural racial inequities experienced by its communities of color."

"New York’s history has been one of colonization, exploitation, and racial oppression. The land New York City stands on today once belonged to the Lenape people, who were forcibly displaced through settler colonialism. From the era of Dutch colonization to modern times, systemic racism has shaped the experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latine, Asian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, and other communities of color," the Mamdani report says, explaining, "This plan uses the gender-neutral term ‘Latine’ when referring broadly to communities and identities. However, many historical documents and data sources (including those referenced in this plan) use binary gender classifications and terms such as Latino/Latina or Hispanic (often used interchangeably). Those labels are retained when quoting or citing those sources. In specific historical contexts, these terms are used because it reflects the terminology of the time."

(More succinctly, gender-fixated policymakers have started using the made up word "Latine" instead of previously trendy "Latinx," which many Latin American people found offensive.)

Mamdani’s racial equity plan offers an oversimplification of what happened to the Lenape people; one of their chiefs, White Eyes, spoke to the Continental Congress in 1776, seeking a strong alliance with the Americans, and also in 1776, the Continental Congress proposed a text to communicate to White Eyes "to convince you that we wish to advance your happiness, and that there may be a lasting union between us, and that, as you express it, we may become one people." The letter went on, "We wish to promote the lasting peace and happiness of all our brothers, the Indian nations, who live with us on this great island. As far as your settlement and security may depend upon us, you may be assured of our protection. We shall take all the care in our power, that no interruption or disturbance be given you by our people, nor shall any of them be suffered, by force or fraud, to deprive you of any of your lands, or to settle them without a fair purchase from you, and your free consent. If contrary to our intention, any injury should be offered to you by any of our people, inform us of it, and we shall always be ready to procure you satisfaction and redress." That’s not to deny that some Americans and the American government did terrible things to many Native Americans; it is to say, though, that to sum it all up as "colonization, exploitation, and racial oppression" is an example of ideological negativity defeating empirical curiosity.

Mamdani and Dimon offer different views not only of the past history but also of the best course for current and future policy. Dimon talks about "our country’s values" and lists among them "free enterprise," "self-reliance," and "freedom of religion," three terms that do not appear at all in Mamdani’s document.

Both documents quote the Declaration of Independence and what Walter Isaacson calls the Greatest Sentence Ever Written. Dimon quotes the full sentence, splitting it into two: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." "That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Mamdani’s document eliminates the "Creator" and leaps immediately into denouncing America for profiting from slavery: "A country that proclaims ‘all men are created equal … with inalienable rights … life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ in its Declaration of Independence, is also a country which greatly profited off practices and systems of slavery, since the founding of settlements and colonies in the 17th century."

Both documents denounce bigotry, but there, too lies a contrast. Dimon writes, "We should fight blind ideologies, like anti-Semitism, and any form of racism however and whenever it rears its ugly head." Mamdani’s 375-page document makes no mention of anti-Semitism and in fact seems to bend over backward to omit it. A "historical timeline" that is part of the mayor’s plan mentions 2001 as the year when a "'War on Terror’ ushered in an era of mass surveillance and profiling of Arab, South Asian, and Muslim communities." It also mentions what he calls the 2017 "Muslim Ban," when "the Trump administration restricts entry into the U.S. from several Muslim-majority countries, sparking mass protests across the nation for being discriminatory and anti-immigrant." There’s no mention on the timeline of the 1991 Crown Heights Riot in Brooklyn, which at the time it occurred was the worst outbreak of anti-Semitic violence in contemporary American history.

Both documents discuss regulations. Dimon writes, "Some politicians think that all regulations are good — the more the better. Given that many of these politicians come from the blue side of America’s red-blue divide, I think it’s more appropriate to call excessive regulation ‘blue tape.’" Mamdani gestures in the direction of reducing regulations and easing permitting requirements for small businesses. Yet in practice the "goals, strategies and indicators" outlined by the mayor—more than 200 goals, more than 800 strategies, and more than 600 indicators—are just another extra-large roll of blue tape.

According to the New York Times, Dimon is a registered Democrat who tacitly supported Kamala Harris. But he hasn’t been shy about criticizing Democrats as sometimes "intensely stupid." He recently told Axios that the business community had "overdone DEI in a lot of cases." He’s also open-minded about the new Great Migration.  In another recent interview, at the Hill & Valley Forum, with former congressman Mike Gallagher, now at Palantir, Dimon said, "Our head count in Manhattan when I got to JPMorgan was 35,000 and now is 26,000. Our head count in Texas started at 11,000, now it's 33,000. … People vote with their feet."

Mamdani, by contrast, looks backward, focusing on select grievances which he seeks to remedy with "equity." He and his cohort portray American history as a tale of imperialism and oppression. His friends at the Times even sought, in 2019, "to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative."

These dueling visions—grievance versus optimism—will likely define the debate about America’s future. As Dimon put it, they aren’t totally mutually exclusive—acknowledging America’s flaws doesn’t prevent celebrating America’s ability to fix its flaws and believing in its continued capacity for self-improvement. Yet Mamdani—the son of a Columbia professor full of criticism of settler colonialism—generates doubts about whether New York City will be at the lead of America’s next 250 years or, instead, will be undermining it. Those of us in the optimism camp have some confidence that, regardless of New York City’s role, America will net out as it has over the past 250 years, as a kind of miracle.

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