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He was initially rejected because his credit score did not meet the requirements. He then transformed his image and identity by trimming his eyebrows, cutting his hair and changing his name to 'Jojo'.
He got accepted though the Affirmative Action programme, but what came with his image change was the "black experience". He experienced the daily struggles of black people, racial profiling and police harassment being two of many.
Chokal-Ingam adds that he was both fetishised and feared by some women he encountered while he was "black".
Despite experiencing the discrimination black people face, he went on to show that Affirmative Action is discrimination, as seen on his tweet below.
#yikes RT @VijayIngam "#affirmativeaction is DISCRIMINATION; it's a lie to call it else. I got into medical school with a 3.1 GPA as black."
— Zeba Blay (@zblay) April 4, 2015The question of ethics and racism is not the only one that arises concerning this incident. New evidence, in the form of DNA, studies and artefacts has emerged that black people of African descent were the first to live in other parts of the world as well, such as Asia and the Americas.
According to Atlanta Black Star, a population of people classified as black resides in India and it is said to be one of the biggest in the world. The writer adds that the presence of Africans in India goes back as far as 30 000 years.
This group of people resided (and still do) in the Andaman Islands between the Bay and Bengal, which is the East of India.
What’s more is that this group (like the more well-known blacks) have experienced racism and colourism under the Hindu caste system and classified as "untouchables", because of the pigment of their skin. These people were also the poorest in the Indian community.
Even the TV character Cookie Lyon refers to a prejudiced Indian taxi driver as "black like [her]" in a scene from hit show Empire. Black Tumblr and – Twitter rejoiced and agreed with this.
This goes to show that race isn't just black and white. It has its grey (or rather brown) areas, and that has me asking: What is black and what defines it? Is it the melanin on my skin, or the texture of my hair? Is it my lived experience or rules from the 'top'?
The problem here is also that we have been conditioned to see blackness through a white supremacist lens. This perspective has glibly determined race according to appearance and the extent of black genes in the person’s body by the 'one-drop rule'.
This rule entails that anyone who is white, but has a black relative somewhere in his or her bloodline is considered black. That relative was referred to as one drop of black blood.
This applied for bi-racial people, mostly a mixture of European and African ethnicity. But, on the other hand, Indians who were put at the bottom of the caste system are not easily identified as black.
I see Chokal-Ingam as both victim and practitioner of this perspective, because he sees race in that hegemonic and rigid lens, which leads him to the stereotyping of blackness and his stance against Affirmative Action.
He too is possibly black, but he may not know until he decides to trace his roots with a DNA test – and that is if he wants to. He most definitely isn't white.
What I have a problem with is certain people alienating themselves from blackness in general, but identifying with it when it promises to benefit them. Such appears to be the case here.
I believe that through his social experiment, Chokal-Ingam should have learnt that blackness is not as convenient as he thought it would be, even with Affirmative Action.
Black people in many parts of the world face the reality of having to prove themselves to the world; sometimes defending certain choices of dress, behaviour, the way we naturally look, and yes even Affirmative Action, which is nothing but a system put into place to address previous and current discrimination and societal racism against people of colour.
Since I don’t have the energy to defend the programme right now, here is the best explanation I’ve seen:
This is the shortest way to express my issues with @VijayIngam and his views about #affirmativeaction pic.twitter.com/vUEwdQQmZy
— Alexander Young (@Alex_Young14) April 5, 2015Lastly, I observe that blackness is fragmented, but we are becoming more informed about who we are; and the things we used to believe as facts are now coming under question. That is a good start. Will we one day reunite, recognise how diverse we are as black people and be fully awaken? I don’t have the answer, but I have hope.
