Mindy Kaling’s Brother: Pretending to Be Black to Get into Med School

Vijay Chokalingam, the author of Almost Black – How I Posed as Black to Get into Medical School and brother of comedian Mindy Kaling, sits for an interview with Merion West to discuss affirmative action.

One particularly optimistic affirmative action opponent is Vijay Chokalingam, author of Almost Black – How I Posed as Black to Get into Medical School. Choklaingam is confident that the days of the race-based admission policy are nigh, referencing President Trump’s choice of Neil Gorsuch as the main reason for his optimism.

I had a chance to speak with the controversial author, graduate school admissions consultant, and brother of TV star Mindy Kaling, to gauge his thoughts on the matter. During the course of the conversation, he described the race-based federal policy of affirmative action as the “Jim Crow of our time.”

During his undergraduate years at the University of Chicago in the late 1990s, Chokalingam, a self-described “hard-partying Indian-American frat boy with a mediocre GPA” became disillusioned about his medical school admission prospects when he realized that all of his older Indian friends were being rejected from medical programs. Making matters appear even worse, their resumes were more impressive than his own.

According to Chokalingam, these circumstances ultimately prompted the desperation-driven college student to do the unimaginable. Already dark skinned, Chokalingam shaved his hair and trimmed his eyebrows, joined the Organization of Black Students, and began referring to himself as “Jojo.” As far as graduate school admissions officers were concerned, Chokalingam became African-American when he checked the box on his application.