Mindy Kaling’s older brother Vijay ‘Jojo’ Chokalingam is making waves after he claiming he self-identified as black to get accepted into Medical School.

Vijay Chokalingam – Almost Black

Chokalingam, an Indian-American who is estranged from his famous sister, recently revealed that he is writing a book called Almost Black, where he outlines his personal experience trying to pass as black and asserts his strongly anti-affirmative action position.

On his official website – almostblack.com – Chokalingam describes how he came to the conclusion that he should apply to medical school as a black man: “In my junior year of college, I realized that I didn’t have the grades or test scores to get into medical school, at least not as an Indian-American. Still, I was determined to become a doctor and I knew that admission standards for certain minorities under affirmative action were, let’s say… less stringent?”

Chokalingam claimed he shaved his head, started going by his middle name, Jojo, and even joined the Organization of Black Students in an effort to boost his medical school application profile. “Vijay the Indian-American frat boy became Jojo the African American Affirmative Action applicant to medical school,” Chokalingam stated.

Vijay Chokalingam: Affirmative Action Is “Legalized Racism”

AlmostBlack.com

Chokalingam firmly believes that his admission to St. Louis University for medical school in 1999 was due to his minority identification as black, despite the fact that he does not appear to have tried to apply using his real ethnicity or refusing to identify. His grades – a 3.1 GPA and 31 MCAT score – he says are nowhere near the caliber normally accepted into the university. Furthermore, Chokalingam states that by identifying as black, he was seriously considered for admission by top medical schools, including the University of Pennsylvania and Mount Sinai, despite his lackluster academic record.

After a few years, Chokalingam left med school and eventually earned a graduate degree from the UCLA Anderson School of Management (to which he applied using his given name and ethnicity). He now works as a resumé writer and application consultant, and is making his way to becoming an activist against Affirmative Action.

“My experience applying to medical school as a black man impressed on me the injustice created by the system of legalized racism called affirmative action,” Chokalingam wrote.

Mindy Kaling Is Estranged From Her Brother

Kaling has denied any knowledge of her brother’s decision to identify himself as a black man on his medical school applications. “Mindy has been estranged from her brother for years. She was not aware of his decision to apply to medical school under a different name and race,” Kaling said in a statement.

Chokalingam confirmed that he isn’t close to his sister in his Twitter bio, in which he identifies himself as “Mindy Kaling’s brother/nemesis” and an “Affirmative Action Hacktivist.” Furthermore, on his website, Chokalingam claims that Kaling specifically told him, “This book will bring shame on our family.”

Speaking about his sister on Twitter, Chokalingam claimed, “She never really cared about me or my work,” sharing a link to an old interview of Kaling in which he was mentioned.

In the interview linked, however, Kaling actually only admitted that she didn’t understand his job as a “financial analyst” – a position he has since vacated.

“He’s a financial analyst for JD Power and Associates in LA. I feel like I know nothing about it. But he loves entertainment and TV so much that he doesn’t go into detail about his job all that much to me. He just wants to find out what happened on set. Maybe that’s just a rationalization because I can’t really describe what he does. But that’s how it plays out between us,” Kaling said in the 2011 interview.

Article by Olivia Truffaut-Wong

Olivia Truffaut-Wong was born and raised in Berkeley, California, where she developed her love of all things entertainment. After moving to New York City to earn her degree in Film Studies, she stayed on the East Coast to follow her passion and become an entertainment writer. She lives on a diet of television, movies and food.