Unpopular opinion: there are non-Black people of
color who map out their American dream through the lens of white supremacy,
cultivate their characters and make names for themselves by co-opting (or
exploiting) the voices and experiences of Black-Americans, and who try to
peddle some agenda by throwing Black people under the bus. And it’s something
that has always stuck in my craw, because whatever the motive, ‘Blackness’
(whether it be through cultural appropriation or the perpetuation of
anti-Blackness) seems to serve as the impetus for how some non-Black people of
color attain upward mobility and notoriety.
In any event, Vijay Chokal-Ingam, the older brother of South
Asian-American comedic actress and showrunner Mindy Kaling, is no exception.
Vijay is kicking
up dust on social media by claiming to have once concocted a ploy—turned
nefarious social experiment—as an undergrad, in which he pretended to be a
Black man to garner acceptance into a medical school, and continued with his
alleged charade for 2 years, during his stint.
During his junior year at the University of Chicago, Vijay
came to the sobering realization that his college GPA and test scores didn't pass muster with academic
administrators at choice medical schools, so alleges he thought he’d try Blackness
on for size to prove some convoluted point about affirmative-action, because as
par for the course, detractors seem to think affirmative-action is an
undeserved entitlement that solely benefits what they perceive to be,
unqualified or underachieving Black folks; white
women (especially) and working-age people with disabilities be damned.
“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 know that
admission standards for certain minorities under affirmative action were, let’s
say… less stringent?” Vijay writes on his website,
“So, I shaved my head, trimmed my long Indian eyelashes, and applied to medical school as a black man. …Vijay the Indian-American frat boy become Jojo the African American Affirmative Action applicant to medical school.”
While performing his 21st century rendition of a minstrel
show, Jojo Vijay claims to have applied to 11 top tier medical schools
in 9 major American cities, yet (and still) only managed to get an acceptance
letter from one... St. Louis University School of Medicine.
Vijay also rambles on about the injustice of “affirmative
action racism", but fleetingly mentions having fallen victim to police
harassment and hostility from store clerks—I’m assuming because the
disingenuous conservative narrative he's trying to construct can't be bogged
down by details like history, power-dynamics, institutional racism and racial
profiling—and says his 'Black
mojo' invoked revulsion and sexual desire in women,
“Cops harassed me. Store clerks accused me of shoplifting. Women were either scared of me or couldn't keep their hands off of me.”
So, in summation, Vijay (who eventually dropped out of med
school after two years and got an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management
as himself—a South Asian-American man from a well-to-do family) has decided to
spill open about his past as a deceptive, anti-Black con-artist via a
forthcoming book he’s co-authoring called, Almost Black… A story that likens
itself to the comedic stylings of the 1986 film Soul Man and the
‘poignant’ and ‘wrenching’ tone of John Howard Griffin’s book Black Like Me, but is
really a stunt-and-show by a man projecting whatever feelings of academic
ineptitude he grappled with, onto Black folks.
And like most people who love to shit on Black-Americans are
won’t to do, he's using his online platforms to rail against affirmative
action, is making sure to continue using Blackness as a rhetorical device to
promote his interests and has hailed fellow anti-affirmative action whiner,
Abigail Fisher as “the
Rosa Parks of our time."
In an interview with the New
York Post, Vijay Chokal-Ingam says his sister is, unsurprisingly,
displeased with his histrionics. Also, according to his co-conspirator co-author,
“Mindy, who’s known and loved this story for years, read the proposal and lit into Vijay like an enraged badger. She told him the book would ‘bring shame on our family.’ Funny, since Vijay points out she plays a slut on national TV. Vijay is convinced his sister is furious he’s trying to horn in on her comedic territory.”
Well, alrighty then.
No further word on how, exactly, Vijay was able to
convincingly fudge his racial background on applications without arousing
suspicion (Because I'm still trying to determine if this is some sort of
elaborate troll-a-thon for attention.), whether he, undoubtedly and without
question, only got into the one medical school because admissions thought he was Black, why
he felt the need to clip his eyelashes to convey the role (Black men have
enviably lush eyelashes.) or what his opinion is on opportunists who use their
famous sister’s celebrity to promote themselves.
