Cea Weaver’s Comments Were Shocking. They Used to be Normal.

City Journal ^ | Jan 16 2026 | Oliver Traldi

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Earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced controversy for his appointment of advisor Cea Weaver to run the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. Weaver, X users and the media soon discovered, had made several social-media posts asserting that homeownership was “racist” and “a weapon of white supremacy,” and calling for policies to “impoverish the white middle class.”

I dislike the attitudes expressed in these posts. I even think they’re racist. But it’s easy to treat them as aberrant. In fact, at the time they were made—the late 2010s—those attitudes were culturally dominant.

Such instinctual, casual anti-white statements reinforced the active institutional discrimination against white males recently described by Jacob Savage in his widely noted Compact essay “The Lost Generation.” Savage shows how an entire generation of white males suffered unfair treatment under the DEI regime in applying for and holding certain types of jobs. Everyone else suffered, too, from this bigoted ideology. It led not just to bias in hiring but to an absurd culture of racialized thinking.

In 2008, I attended a conference held by a progressive Washington, D.C., think tank and advocacy group. The keynote speaker was a member of Congress who tried to impress upon us the importance of representation. Many of the conference’s panels, she urged, had not taken local and demographic concerns seriously enough; for instance, calls to shut down private prisons ignored how some local residents might be employed at those prisons. In one particular primary campaign, she claimed, the stakes of representation were high, because a majority-minority community was being represented by someone who, in her words, “didn’t look like them.” It was important to support the opposing candidate, a black woman who had risen through the local party apparatus and would presumably better represent these people.

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TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: New York
KEYWORDS: kathyhochul; newyork; newyorkcity; normalinchina; zohranmamdani

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TRANSLATION: "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

[butlerweave]

TRANSLATION: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

That Hudson Brother’s movie ?

[TornadoAlley3]

Sad CIA will not last long.

[BenLurkin]

late 2010s—those attitudes were culturally dominant

In what culture?

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So she’s a cow that just follows the herd. Check.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

In fact, at the time they were made—the late 2010s—those attitudes were culturally dominant.

No.

They weren't.

I know people think that because something is bandied about on college campuses by TAs that are stoned out of their gourds that something is "culturally dominant".

It isn't.

[BradyLS]

They were never “normal.”

[marktwain]

They were never “normal.”

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Exactly correct. In some locations, especially some universities and colleges, they were taught as culturally dominant. It was a lie.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

Who the hell names their kid “Cea”?? What is that, a combination of coffee and tea?

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

at the time they were made—the late 2010s—those attitudes were culturally dominant

Seems like I lived through those years, and I had stopped drinking by then so I even remember some of it. These stupid ideas were not dominant in any culture I was aware of.

[x]

She named herself that. Birth name: Celia.

[x]

Other people might have thought more or less as she does, but she gave her comment a personal bite or sting.

She “said the quiet part out loud,” like Biden would do.