So the question has arisen as to why. Early in the campaign, when Mamdani was the longest of long shots, it was easy to assume that failure to learn his name reflected a failure to take him seriously. As his outsider bid gained momentum, the tongue-twisting was easier to read as deliberate incivility. Or perhaps it was outright racism, the same “otherizing” impulse that made some right-wing critics take such evident pleasure in articulating the “Hussein” in the name Barack Hussein Obama.