Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam

“Racial discrimination is when a person is treated less favorably than another person in a similar situation because of their race.” –Page 324

Affirmative Action (noun): an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education.

I honestly have no idea how to word this without offending someone. I guess that is the beauty of communication. Anything is offensive and any words can offend. Guess I will start with the plot of the book.

Almost Black is the story of a man who pretends to be black to get into medical school. That is it.

Now some of you may be going “well that is just blatant blackface.”

And I would agree with you except for one thing.

Vijay is darker than the paper bags you get at grocery stores.

And as an Indian he counts as an Asian American, a race that affirmative action does not work for.

Throughout this book, “Jojo” (as Vijay calls himself on his medical school applications) compares himself to another Indian student who has better grades, a better MCAT score, and is not pretending to be black. This student did not even get interviewed for ANY college. Meanwhile, Jojo visits five schools to interview and an acceptance letter. All because he checked the box the schools were looking for. This is so unfair it made me upset. Schools were bending over backwards (i.e. overlooking Jojo’s grade point average that was lower than the school’s standards for applicants) for Jojo who they had thought was black and ignoring the other minority who already fit into their standards.
So is affirmative action racism in disguise? I think so. How can we fix it? I would get rid of the race question on all application forms. You can’t really be discriminative if you don’t know the race of the person applying. This way everyone has a chance to get an interview without the colleges having to lower their standards. That is just me though.… (meer)

At first, I thought this book was a bit satirical but as I continue to go through the book I found it quite unique. I was first surprised by how much attention was given to detail by statistical means. The author calculated that perform a race change would increase his odds of enter medical school. The idea that simply changing the race section of an application gives someone a better chance of being accepted to a college is mind boggling. The author did not perform this as a joke but that to prove a point and a point was proven.

While the book is a fascinating story the novel-style of some of the narrative was not to my liking. It was not bad but seemed a bit ill-placed. However, I rather enjoy the "hear my thoughts" throughout the book. This added some style and personal feel to the story.

All in all, not a bad book. I know the author is trying to draw attention to what he believes are injustices in the USA. Was this the right approach? I am unsure, but it was fun to hear about it.… (meer)