When it might have given him a leg up at Columbia, he checked the ‘black’ box When Zohran Mamdani applied to Columbia University in 2009, he checked both the “Asian” and “Black or African American” boxes on his admissions form. He wasn’t lying – technically. Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani said he was trying to express his complex heritage. But in a recent interview with The New York Times , he admitted something telling: he doesn’t consider himself black. That admission, buried