Overview
May marks the official month observing Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian identity; New York City is home to more than 1 million Asian American and Pacific Islander New Yorkers whose cultures, labor, and communities make the city more vibrant, dynamic, and alive every single day
First Asian American to win a council seat
“I often joked that I was the head of the Asian caucus in the City Council and that was a lone, unanimous vote,” recalled State Senator John Liu in a phone interview. The now-Queens lawmaker was not the first Asian American to run for a City Council seat, but he was the first to win.
When Liu entered office back in 2002, he received calls from colleagues, unions, and other entities enlisting him as the unofficial tip-line for everything Asian American in New York City. He recounted fielding questions about cultures, traditions, and where to eat. “I even got one fellow council member, who had been in office for decades, to ask me to help their office translate some materials into ‘Asian,’” said Liu. “To which I asked for clarification about which language — whether it be Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog. Which they answered with: ‘No, just translate to Asian, just plain old Asian.’”
AAPI communities are NYC’s fastest-growing racial group
Today, Asian American/Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) are the city’s fastest growing racial group. Behind the monolith, more than 30 different ethnic groups live in the city, and they speak more than 50 different languages. “Plain old Asian” is not one. According to the state, New York City is now home to more Asian people than any other non-Asian city. Naturally, Asian New Yorkers desired more political representation to reflect this diversity, particularly in Queens, where many of their ethnoburbs developed.
Liu, who is Taiwanese American, also became the first Asian American citywide official when he won the 2010 comptroller’s race. Harlem kingmaker Bill Lynch, who famously advised a “who’s-who” of Black political luminaries, served as his chief advisor. They later teamed up again for Liu’s unsuccessful mayoral democratic primary bid in 2013, shortly before Lynch’s untimely death.
First Asian American Mayor Mamdani
Ultimately, another decade passed before New York City elected its first Asian American mayor. Liu calls Zohran Mamdani’s victory last year a “moment of pride and empowerment.” He played a hand, endorsing the now-mayor before the Democratic primary.
During the June 2025 announcement, they bonded over both attending the Bronx High School of Science. “When I walked the halls of Bronx Science, I thought, ‘This man is an inspiration of what was possible in this city,’” said Mamdani last year. “The first Asian citywide elected would walk those same halls many years before.” “Not that many,” butted in Liu, who graduated in 1985.
“This is a state senator who has fought time and again to ensure inclusion in our school’s curriculum, so that Asian Americans can see ourselves in the studies that our students go through,” added Mamdani.
Mamdani’s dramatic popularity among Asian American communities remains well-documented. Two-thirds of his “day 1” endorsements came from Asian American organizations. Exit polls found Asian Americans backed the Democratic socialist more than any other racial group — all while Asian neighborhoods noticeably shifted rightward in other recent prominent elections. Yet, Mamdani’s campaign rarely drew directly from his own Asian American identity to secure this support.
First Gen Z Councilmember Chi Ossé
“I think it really is about substance,” said Councilmember Chi Ossé. “He spoke about how he’s going to improve the lives of New Yorkers [and] how he’s going to make the city more affordable, and that’s what people voted for. It’s great that he is an Asian American, but I don’t think that should be the only thing that an individual like himself should be running on … it’s an extra bonus that someone from our community is the one who is trailblazing and showing the world what being a leader looks like.”
Ossé himself boasts Caribbean and Chinese heritage while representing one of the city’s key historically Black districts. His view of “identity politics” shifted over the past few years since he became the first Gen Z member elected to the council. Growing up, Ossé saw representation as simply getting a Black or Asian person into office, but now he looks beyond just a shared identity, as evidenced by his past vocal criticism (and online trolling) against Mamdani’s predecessor and the city’s second Black mayor, Eric Adams.
While Liu never officially established his one-man Asian caucus in the City Council, eight members of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus (BLAC), including Ossé, are Asian American. Co-chair Christopher Marte, who represents a key Lower Manhattan district containing Chinatown, believes the council finally reflects the city and traced back how the priorities from his Asian American constituents evolved. He came into office in 2022, on the heels of the pandemic, when the Stop Asian Hate campaign took off and brought newfound awareness on AAPI issues.
“It really put a spotlight, which we as a community have been dealing with for a really long time: the inequities, the lack of representation,” said Marte. “It’s something you even see with the city’s budget: A lot of organizations that support Asian American communities get a fraction of what the city is allocating elsewhere, but also, I care a lot about zoning and fighting against displacement and gentrification.
“Chinatown, Two Bridges, and [the] Lower East Side [are] ground zero of where this battle is happening … it’s much more than the stories highlighted in that moment, but the continuous struggles of making sure Chinatown is here and it’s thriving.”
Who’s left out of the conversation?
Beyond how Asian Americans are represented, there also remains the question of who gets to represent them. Ossé recalled a recent conversation with a Thai American staffer about the exclusion and colorism South Asians like Mamdani and Black Asians like himself face in the broader community. He still thinks that mixed-race and non-East Asian Americans remain overlooked in narratives about representation.
“Brown [South Asians and] Black mixed-Asians are definitely left out of the conversation in many ways,” said Ossé. “We do face a lot of bigotry, racism, [and] colorism. I truly believe that we’re sometimes underrepresented within not only politics, but media and culture, and in the overall conversation.”
Not for nothing, Asian representation can often seem like just East Asian representation. The film “Crazy Rich Asians” served as a landmark leap in diversity on the big screen, even as South Asians only appeared through a small, often-criticized portrayal despite Singapore’s robust minority population. During the 2020 presidential primaries, much was said about candidate Andrew Yang’s Taiwanese American identity, while most overlooked future vice president Kamala Harris’s South Asian mixed-race heritage.
In 2022, “Daily Show” comedian Ronny Chieng caught heat for jokingly saying that “Indians are not Asians” during a bit about then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “If this guy is Asian, how come when he became prime minister, I felt absolutely nothing?” added Chieng. “When I was down at Dim Sum Palace this morning, me and the fellas weren’t like ‘Oh, sh**, that’s me up there.’”
A South Asian identity
All of this is to say that it might not be surprising that Mamdani is regarded by many as simply the city’s first South Asian mayor, even if his victory monumentally represents an entire racial category in ethnic lines, similarly to Liu’s more than two decades ago.
Other components from Mamdani’s identity were thoroughly examined during the past mayoral election cycle. Endless thinkpieces explored his Muslim beliefs, sometimes quite offensively, while the public caught onto the growing South Asian political power stemming from his victory. His African upbringing was also regularly analyzed. Both his parents were born in India, but hail from different states, as well as different ethnic and religious backgrounds. His father, Prof. Mahmood Mamdani, was born in Mumbai, but was raised in Kampala, Uganda, where a distinct community of Gujarati Muslims resided. His mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, comes from a Punjabi Hindu family. Mamdani himself was born in Uganda, but moved to New York City as a child. “He clearly has roots in India, and that makes him Asian American as much as any other Asian American,” said Liu.
May marks the official month observing Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian identity, traditionally through Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM), although the exact official name has continued to change over the past few federal administrations. Mamdani quietly celebrated the occasion this past Friday, May 22, in an unannounced visit with congressional candidate Claire Valdez to a Sunnyside AAPI night market at the 40th Street-Lowery Street station.
A city shaped by immigrants
“New York City is home to more than 1 million Asian American and Pacific Islander New Yorkers whose cultures, labor, and communities make this city more vibrant, dynamic, and alive every single day,” Mamdani told the AmNews later by email. “During Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, it is a profound privilege to serve as mayor of a city shaped by generations of immigrants, workers, small-business owners, organizers, and families who helped build New York and continue to shape its future.”
His arrival quickly drew a sizable crowd, even for a Friday evening at a Queens 7 train stop. East, South, and Southeast Asians alike quickly descended on him for photos and handshakes as he approached vendors. It’s the “world’s borough,” after all. Sunnyside, which boasts a significant Korean, Bangladeshi, and Nepali population, strongly went for Mamdani, who represented a neighboring assembly district before he became mayor, in last year’s election.
“We [Asian Americans] have many things which we like to say, but we don’t say — now [Mamdani] opened up the gate,” said vendor Hideo Nakamura, who emigrated from Japan more than three decades ago. “I think he’s a great mayor, a mayor of hope … for anybody, but especially for Asian Americans.”
This article was first published in the Amsterdam News.