This is the official website of Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam, author of Almost Black and “anti-affirmative action hacktivist” who has been actively involved with the legal cases against AA & CRT since 2018, as a rally speaker and public proponent for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA).

If you had a good laugh watching the video and loved the narration, you’ll be pleased to know that Spencer Cannon, the same person who brought the humor to life in the video, also narrates the audiobook version of “Almost Black.” You can continue enjoying his engaging storytelling in the audiobook, making it a perfect choice for some light-hearted listening.

  • I joined my friend Edward Blum, President of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), on the front steps of the Supreme Court in October 2022, when the high court judges heard arguments from lawyers representing SFFA regarding racial discrimination practices at Harvard and UNC. See my speech at the event as well.

Vijay Ingam and Edward Blum

Also pictured with former UC Regent Ward Connerly and Abigail Fisher, two of the most prominent anti-Affirmative Action activists.

  • I joined Californians for Equal Rights (CFER) and the Equal Rights for All PAC (led by Ward Connerly and Tony Guan) as part of the successful No on Proposition 16 Campaign that kept affirmative action illegal in California state institutions in 2020, including my alma mater UCLA. We won 57% of the vote including a majority of Asians and Hispanics! See my speech at one of the rallies.
  • At the 2023 California Republican Convention, I thanked Representative Michelle Steele who led 80 members of Congress including Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Young Kim, Kevin McCarthy, Tom Cotton, Elise Stefanik, and Rick Scott to sign an amicus brief in support of SFFA.

Please consider supporting our cause by purchasing my book and donating to Students for Fair Admissions and their partners the Asian American Coalition for Education. If you’re in California, please consider supporting Californians for Equal Rights and the Equal Rights for All PAC. Also, don’t forget to support the 80 members of Congress who endorsed our cause!

If you are a member of the press seeking comments on the SFFA vs Harvard case, please fill out my contact form and my PR representative will reach out to you. You can also check out my previous press mentions and media commentaries here.

Below are some additional videos of my past event speeches, TV segments, media interviews and conference talks about affirmative action, equal education for all, and related topics.

SFFA 2018 rally in front of the Boston Trinity Church, when the Harvard case started

I appeared on Quint to defend the causes of Edward Blum and Students for Fair Admissions

I discuss my experiences with former President Barack Obama and how I posed as black to get into medical school on Varney & Co. / Fox Business.

I discussed Affirmative Action in Medical School Admissions on Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight

I discussed Affirmative Action on CNN Michael Smerconish

I spoke at the CAA (Chinese American Alliance) and CAA Action (Chinese American Alliance Action) Conference

My Story

I got into medical school by saying I was black. I lied.

Honestly, I am about as black as Gandhi.

Once upon a time, I was an ethically challenged, hard-partying Indian American frat boy enjoying my third year of college. That is until I realized I didn’t have the grades or test scores to get into medical school.

Legitimately.

Still, I was determined to be a doctor and discovered that affirmative action provided a loophole that might help.

The only problem? I wasn’t a minority. So I became one.

I shaved my head, trimmed my long Indian eyelashes, and applied as an African American. Not even my own frat brothers recognized me. I joined the Organization of Black Students and used my middle name, Jojo.

Vijay, the Indian American frat boy, became Jojo, the African American med school applicant.

Not everything went as planned. During a med school interview, an African American doctor angrily confronted me for not being black. Cops harassed me. Store clerks accused me of shoplifting. Women were either scared of me or found my bald black dude look sexually mesmerizing. What started as a scam to get into med school turned into a twisted social experiment, teaching me lessons I would never have learned in the classroom.

I became a serious contender at some of America’s greatest schools, including Harvard, Wash U, UPenn, Case Western, George Washington, Pitt, Yale, Rochester, Nebraska, and Columbia. I interviewed at 11 schools while posing as a black man. After all that, I finally got accepted into medical school.

Almost Black: The True Story of How I Got into Medical School by Pretending to Be Black combines the comic tone of 1986’s Soul Man, starring C. Thomas Howell, Rae Dawn Chong, and James Earl Jones, with the deeply poignant observations of Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin’s classic.

Resembling a mashup of the two works (but far more humorous), the hedonistic frat boy discovered something far more than what he’d bargained for while posing as a black man: the seriousness, complexities, and infuriating injustice of America’s racial problems. In Black Like Me, Griffin was a white man posing as a black man in the American South, prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I wasn’t on some intense social mission like he was, but just as Griffin did, I came away changed.

Before I finished this book, I stirred a hornet’s nest by telling the story. It’s been featured on more than 100 media outlets, including CNN, ABC, NBC, FOX, TIME, The Guardian, National Review, Washington Post, Salon, Gawker, VOX, VICE, Complex, Buzz Feed, Huffington Post, Daily Mail, and Perez Hilton. Many loved it, but not everyone approved of what I did. My college classmate, Tucker Max (I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell), disapproved. My sister, Mindy Kaling (The Office / The Mindy Project), furiously declared, “This book will bring shame on our family!

I’ll let you be the judge.