Actress Mindy Kaling, whom you might know from the sitcom she created and now stars in called “The Mindy Project,” has a brother who has exploited both his relationship to his famous sister and an ethically indefensible fraud to gain some momentary fame and perhaps a book deal. Vijay Chokalingam has revealed that 17 years ago he gained acceptance to St. Louis University’s School of Medicine by falsely representing himself as an African-American.

On his new website, Almost Black, Chokalingam explains,

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 knew that admission standards for certain minorities under affirmative action were, let’s say… less stringent? So, I shaved my head, trimmed my long Indian eyelashes, and applied to medical school as a black man. My change in appearance was so startling that my own fraternity brothers didn’t recognize me at first. I even joined the Organization of Black Students and started using my embarrassing middle name that I had hidden from all of my friends since I was a 9 years old.

Vijay the Indian-American frat boy become Jojo the African American Affirmative Action applicant to medical school….I became a serious contender at some of the greatest medical schools in America, including Harvard, Wash U, UPenn, Case Western, and Columbia. In all, I interviewed at eleven prestigious medical schools in 9 major cities across America, while posing a black man.

“Jo-Jo” made no effort to hide his many advantages from the admissions officers, he told the New York Post.

“I disclosed that I grew up in one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts, that my mother was a doctor, and that my father was an architect I disclosed that I didn’t receive financial aid from the University of Chicago, and that I had a nice car. I was the campus rich kid, let’s just put it on the table. And yet they considered me an affirmative-action applicant.”

Having illegitimately achieved admission and taken one of the limited slots for medical training available in the U.S., Chokalingam didn’t have the decency to stay in medical school, but chose to drop out and go to business school instead, this time as the Indian-American he is. There he learned, apparently, how to pitch projects. He prudently waited until the statute of limitations on fraud had expired, and came forward with his tale to sell a proposed affirmative action version of the classic “Black Like Me.” Chokalingam says he’s revealing his race ruse now because UCLA is considering strengthening its affirmative-action admissions policies, and he believes the practice is institutional racism.

He’s right about that, but that’s all he’s right about.

Seventeen years ago he engaged in fraud, using deception to acquire something of value he was not entitled to. He is quite right that an affirmative policy that would admit a mediocre student who comes from a wealthy background, good schools and an affluent neighborhood, simply because he identifies as black and has dark skin, is unfair, undemocratic, illogical, divisive…oh, all that and more. It is a stupid policy, but the fact that a policy, rule or law is mistaken, badly conceived or unjust doesn’t change the fact that surreptitiously violating it is unethical. In this case it is unusually so, for the medical school spot that he stole might have given a dedicated young man or woman a chance to become a doctor.

Chokalingam’s shameless revelation also marks him as a fick, an individual who is blatantly unethical and yet unapologetic about his wrongdoing. His rationalization, in addition to #30 on the Rationalizations List, is that “the ends justify the means,” or  #13, The Saint’s Excuse: “It’s for a good cause.” In this he is engaging in the retroactive ennobling of his self-serving exception: when he cheated and lied to get into med school, he wasn’t trying to expose the system. Then he just wanted to steal a place in a medical school class, and did. Now he’s painting his miserable conduct as a blow for the greater good, so he can sell a book, a movie, and become a celebrity like his sister.

Does he really think that anyone who has been paying attention for, oh, about half a century now, hasn’t figured out that affirmative action policies are toxic quota systems that elevate skin color over industry, ability and academic skill? Does anyone not acknowledge that they discriminate against whites and Asians, and undermine trust in the minority professionals who go on to graduate, as they will always labor under the constant suspicion that they were not and are not qualified to do their jobs?

I’ve known this since I was in the administration of Georgetown Law Center decades ago.  I helped the daughter of a wealthy alumnus and lawyer get accepted by changing her application to reflect that fact that she had a Chinese grandmother. Was that fair to the better qualified applicant who didn’t have a minority connection to push him over the line? Of course not. Did it benefit any underprivileged and historically discriminated-against group to allow a wealthy, Wellesley-educated young woman get into law school on the virtues of having the right color grandmother?

No: it is a stupid policy. That fact doesn’t make compounding the stupidity and using it to get into med school as an unqualified student who can’t legitimately use racial preferences to push aside a more qualified and deserving applicant less than contemptible in every way.

As is often the case—James O’Keefe’s unethical hidden camera stunts come to mind—Mindy’s fick of a brother ‘s unethical conduct may have some beneficial results, if only by alerting those who have not been paying attention to how indefensible affirmative action programs are in 2015.

I must admit to some pleasure in the discomfort of knee-jerk defenders of these discriminatory admission policies, like CNN’s Jeff Young, who sputters and spins but can’t make the central ethics problem go away: university affirmative action policies often admit real minorities who are no more disadvantaged than Chokalingam because they have the right skin color or ancestry (or claimed ancestry, like Cherokee Elizabeth Warren), and such a policy is a disgrace in the United States of America.

Young begins by making sure we understand that the medical school that accepted “Jo-Jo” “falls somewhere between 57th and 67th in national rankings. Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and all the higher ranked schools he applied to rejected him.” So? The man still got into medical school by pretending to be black. If his grades had been better, that ruse would have worked at the other schools too. Then Young gives a full-throated defense of affirmative action, similar to the arguments we have heard since the mid-Sixties:

“One-third of Americans are black, Hispanic or Native American; just one in 10 physicians are. Since minority medical practitioners are up to three times as likely to practice in their own communities, this lack of diversity has produced “doctor deserts,” in which urban and rural ethnic enclaves across the nation go without access to primary care physicians.”

To which the answer is: then we need to find a way to train more black, Hispanic and Native American students to develop sufficient skills to allow them to get into medical school on their merits, rather than their skin color. Filling the need for minority doctors with graduates who lacked sufficient qualifications to be admitted absent the use of an anti-white and anti-Asian racial bias ensures that minority communities will suffer from inadequate and incompetent medical care indefinitely. Young’s argument made some sense when “Black Like Me” was published (1961) and could be plausibly defended as a necessary evil, a utilitarian measure to cut the Gordian Knot tied by slavery, Jim Crow, and institutionalized racism. Now affirmative action programs survive as entitlements and progressive sacred cows that impede racial progress.

That, however, does not make what Mindy Kaling’s brother did, or is doing now by taking a belated victory lap , any less wrong. He says his sister opposes his book idea, saying that it bring shame on their family.

I’m with Mindy.

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Pointer: Rick Jones

Sources: CNN, NY Post, Jezebel, Almost Black