From CRT to Campus Protest: The Making of a Mamdani Voter

POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Saturday, April 25, 2026 22:23
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6IXSTRINGJACK

Saturday, November 1, 2025 11:51 PM

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/11/01/from_crt_to_camp
us_protest_the_making_of_mamdani_voter_153481.html

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As a young person deeply engaged in politics, I am often asked why my generation is elevating figures like Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist, in New York. People across the political spectrum want to understand how a candidate who openly advances antisemitic rhetoric has gained traction among young voters.

To me, Mamdani’s popularity is unsurprising – it reflects how my generation has been raised, educated, and conditioned to think.

The reality is that when teachers support Mamdani and when teachers unions endorse him – as they have – students are not far behind. The New York State United Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers together represent nearly 700,000 members. Their financial and organizational backing carries enormous weight.

When students see authority figures in their classrooms lining up behind a candidate, the lesson is clear: This is who “good people” support. The classroom, whether overtly political or not, becomes a training ground for a generation of activists shaped by their educators’ worldview.

Yet what schools do not teach is as revealing as what they do. In most classrooms, divisive but essential topics – tariffs, the economy, abortion, immigration – are avoided under the excuse of being “too controversial.” As a result, students are denied exposure to the real debates that define American politics.

Instead, we are presented with a simplified moral framework: oppressed vs. oppressor. This binary is the foundation of critical race theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which seeped into nearly every aspect of education under the previous administration.

The first major political controversy for my generation was the death of George Floyd, which sparked the largest protests and riots in American history, causing billions of dollars in damages. Yet even then, the facts were ignored. Floyd was not an innocent man – he had a criminal record, including a conviction for armed robbery.

During Derek Chauvin’s trial, prosecutors did not argue that race motivated the arrest, and toxicology reports revealed fentanyl in Floyd’s system. Still, media narratives turned the incident into a symbol of racial oppression. That framing sent a clear message to my generation: America is irredeemably racist, and the only way to fight injustice is to align with movements that claim to represent the oppressed.

From there, it became fashionable to apply the oppressor-vs.-oppressed lens everywhere. Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, was recast as an “apartheid state.” Protests against Israel became trendy on college campuses, with groups like Students for Justice in Palestine receiving backing from national activist networks.

Polling in 2024 showed that 51% of Americans aged 18-24 sided with Hamas over Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, a staggering indicator of how deep this mindset runs. When students are constantly told that to be moral is to side with “the oppressed,” it is no surprise that they gravitate toward candidates like Mamdani, who frame politics around that very narrative.

At the same time, history is taught in fragments. Students learn about the Holocaust, but few are told about present-day legislative fights against antisemitism. For example, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has repeatedly refused to bring forward the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would align U.S. policy with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.

That definition includes denying Israel’s right to exist – something Mamdani has implicitly endorsed through his associations. When students are shielded from these modern realities, they lack the context to see how today’s politics echo the same prejudices they are taught to condemn.

Economic illiteracy only deepens the problem. Politicians like Mamdani rally against the wealthy, insisting they do not “pay their fair sha

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