New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has rolled out a sweeping transition effort that includes more than 17 advisory committees and over 400 members — and one of his most closely watched picks is economist and reparations activist Darrick Hamilton.
According to Fox News, Hamilton, a leading figure in the field of “stratification economics,” will help head Mamdani’s Committee on Economic Development & Workforce Development.
He is the founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School, which describes him as a “pioneer” in research examining how race and ethnicity shape disparities in education, health, and economic outcomes.
Mamdani announced the committee lineup on Monday, signaling an expansive approach to shaping the city’s economic policy under his incoming administration.
Hamilton, who previously studied at Oberlin College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has long argued that racial inequity is woven deeply into America’s economic structure. His views were on full display during congressional testimony in 2021.
“Since our nation’s inception, the immoral devaluation of Black lives has been ingrained in America’s political economy,” Hamilton told lawmakers. “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 government complicit political and economic intervention(s) that have afforded them access to resources and iterative and intergenerational accumulation.”
He also serves on the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies, advising lawmakers on approaches to reparative justice tied to “the historical and present-day consequences of slavery and discrimination.”
One of Hamilton’s signature proposals is “Baby Bonds,” wealth-building trust funds designed to provide children — particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds — with seed capital that grows until adulthood.
Hamilton has argued that such structural solutions are necessary because one-time reparations payments do not go far enough to help Black Americans gain meaningful ownership of “means of production in American society.”
His work has drawn criticism from some activists, including Yvette Carnell of the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) movement, who has accused him of being “clueless” and of shifting his positions to suit political leaders.
Hamilton has maintained that the racial wealth gap is the product of generations of government-backed inequality.
“The typical Black family has about 10 cents on the dollar as a typical white family,” he said in a 2020 episode of Freakonomics Radio. “That history of racial disparity, as it relates to wealth-building, certainly didn’t end with slavery.”
In a separate interview with The Black News Channel, Hamilton defended his unwillingness to “compromise” on policy matters.
“The group that is typically the first to be compromised are the issues related to those that are most marginalized,” he said. “We need government to start doing good, because when people realize the government can do good it creates a momentum, a movement forward that makes it harder for us to turn back.”
Hamilton will be joined on the economic development committee by Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter, and Deyanira Del Río of the New Economy Project, which advocates for “an economy … rooted in racial and gender justice, neighborhood equity and ecological sustainability.”
Mamdani, however, has also faced early pushback over the composition of his transition team, including criticism for bringing in veterans of former mayors Bill de Blasio, Michael Bloomberg, and Eric Adams.
He also tapped a longtime adviser to former President Joe Biden, prompting scrutiny from skeptics who doubt his pledge to break with the city’s political establishment.
“The polls have barely closed, and already the incoming mayor is breaking one of his core promises to shake up the status quo and usher in a new day,” GOP strategist Colin Reed told Fox News Digital. “New York City started a downward spiral under the de Blasio administration, and now some of its main players are returning to the halls of power.”
This is a developing story.
