From Fox News: New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced a new economic and workforce development transition team that will be headed by, among others, reparations activist Darrick Hamilton, who argues the U.S. economy and governmental policies related to it are racist.
Hamilton, who went to Oberlin College and later the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at the progressive The New School university in New York City. Hamilton’s academic biography at The New School calls him a “pioneer” in the field of “stratification economics,” which is aimed at looking at how race and ethnicity are embedded into “inequality” in education, economic and health outcomes.
Mamdani announced Monday the creation of more than 17 transition advisory committees made up of more than 400 people to help advise his incoming administration, including the Committee on Economic Development & Workforce Development, which Hamilton will help lead.
“Since our nation’s inception, the immoral devaluation of Black lives has been ingrained in America’s political economy, and (has) manifested in a persistent, unjust, and enormous racial wealth gap,” Hamilton told Congress in 2021. “Our unjust racial wealth gap is itself an implicit measure of our racist past that is rooted in a history in which whites have been privileged by (a) government complicit (in) political and economic intervention(s) that have afforded them access to resources and iterative and intergenerational accumulation.”
Fox News further notes that Hamilton is on the board of the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies, where he advises members of the New York State legislature on policy recommendations for “reparative justice,” as it relates to “the historical and present-day consequences of slavery and discrimination.”
However, Hamilton’s ideas for reparations reportedly go much farther than just wanting to shell out benefits for descendants of slavery – he has also suggested adding Black immigrants to the program.
In July, Hamilton claimed in a post on X that most Black people can’t achieve the American Dream.
— Darrick Hamilton (@DarrickHamilton) July 20, 2025
A progressive group called “Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy” is celebrating Hamilton’s appointment.
We’re thrilled to announce that the Institute’s Founding Director, @DarrickHamilton, has been appointed to Mayor-elect @ZohranKMamdani‘s Transition Committee on Economic & Workforce Development.
In this role, he’ll advise on policy strategies to advance a more affordable NYC. pic.twitter.com/r9gapaJejc
— Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy (@RacePowerPolicy) November 25, 2025
READ MORE from Fox News.
Mamdani economic advisor is reparations activist who says ‘devaluation of Black lives’ ingrained in US system https://t.co/zKIWGaPZQR
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) November 26, 2025
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