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Man Pretends To Be Black To Get Into Med School, Says Affirmative Action Is Racist

BALTIMORE (WJZ/AP) -- Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam, who is actress Mindy Kaling's brother, told CNN last week that he got into medical school by pretending to be black.

Chokal-Ingam, a man of Indian descent who calls himself a "anti-affirmative action hacktivist," wrote a book on the matter called "Almost Black."

His CNN interview came a few days after The New York Times reported the Justice Department was seeking attorneys interested in "investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions."

Chokal-Ingam told CNN that he shaved his head, trimmed his eyelashes, joined a black student association and used his middle name so that he would be mistaken for an African-American man when applying to medical schools.

He had a 3.1 GPA, he says, and got in to St. Louis University despite that GPA being "dramatically lower than their average" of 3.7.

Chokal-Ingam also told CNN he thinks affirmative action is "a system of legalized racism," and says President Donald Trump "will end affirmative action like Lincoln ended slavery."

At the eight Ivy League colleges including Harvard, Yale and Princeton, the number of U.S. minority students in all incoming classes grew by 17 percent between 2010 and 2015, while overall enrollment in those classes grew by less than 2 percent, according to the latest federal data. By 2015, minorities accounted for more than 43 percent of all incoming students in the Ivy League, up from 37 percent in 2010.

The trend partly reflects the demographics of an increasingly diverse nation, but the schools also consider race for reasons including a desire to reverse historically low numbers of minorities at elite universities that in some cases began admitting nonwhite students only in the last 75 years.

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(TM and Copyright 2017 CBS and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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