The NYT has gone another around on their attempt to portray Mamdani correctly checking boxes as somehow suspect. They are what they are and if I haven't convinced you of that after 20 years of doing this then I never will (though I will admit Dash is worst in the failson line), but in case you still can't figure out who what they are trying to communicate, it is:
Mamdani pretended to be black, because black people have lots of unfair advantages that he wished to exploit.