Tokenism

Keya Malladi
Jan 13, 2022
4 min read

Massive strides have been taken to eradicate racism in our world and there has been visible progress, such as an increase of awareness in the media because of the black lives matter movement. Individuals are taking a stand against racism, even huge companies like Coca Cola, who claim that diversity is a part of “who we are as a company, how we operate and how we see our future.” However, the diversity of a company can be a facade because instead of actually hiring and uplifting minorities, they choose a couple of “token” characters to represent them in order to improve their image.

Source: Bryq

Tokenism is racism, but implicit

Tokenism is defined as, “the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce.” In other words, companies hire a couple of people to keep up the image that they are inclusive and diverse. However, this image is more often than not superficial. Even though it might be an attempt at diversity, it does not accomplish its goal since it focuses on keeping up appearances, and “overlooks the more significant yet invisible part: their ideas and perspectives”. On the outside, the company looks as if they promote diversity, but behind the scenes they might be discriminatory towards the people they hire. In reality they could be mistreating them. This can also result in competition in the workplace because minorities have to compete to keep the position that non-minority dominate. Diversity also pays better and according to an article, for every 1% increase in diversity comes a 3% increase in revenue, which explains why many companies jump at the opportunity for diversity. Eventually, hiring for diversity becomes a to-do list for these companies, not a genuine attempt at inclusivity.

Companies promote their workers from minority communities on the outside so the company looks diverse, and they essentially become figureheads without substance. Rather than hiring for talents, these companies are hiring just for themselves and to avoid the criticism of the media and not to help overcome racism and prejudice in the workplace. Such employees never truly belong because they are just tokens.

Tokenism stories

In many popular TV shows the token character is the “one non-white guy in movies” that makes up all the representation. Thankfully progress is slowly happening in the media, such as the TV shows “Never Have I Ever”, “Dear White People”, “Sex Education” and “Euphoria”. These types of TV shows definitely show characters that many people of colour and lgbtq+ can relate to.

There are still parts of the media where tokenism is prevalent, such as the modelling industry. In a YouTube video published by Vogue, model Iman says that at 15, she experienced tokenism when a modelling agent said to her “she couldn’t go up [to model] because they already found a girl of ‘[her] kind’”. The experience scarred her. She couldn’t understand why these modelling companies wouldn’t even look at her. Iman even cut off one of her closest model friends, Jordan, a fellow black model, because agents kept telling her that they would never choose both in their company and they needed to compete for positions. Another model mentioned how these bald, white men were telling her to shave her curly, natural hair because it wasn’t “classy” enough. This is an example of tokenism because it seems that these modelling companies do not care about their models of colour, they just want to fill out checklists. And once those checklists are ticked off they no longer care about representation.

A more common example is discussed in an article about diversity with two college students: a white student called Matt and a black student called Devyn. Devyn’s perspective in the university is that “neither his white peers nor professors value him in the same respect as the average white student”. Alternatively, Matt sees the diversity around him and believes the university is extremely inclusive. Matt is white, and experts say that it is more difficult for them to view these “nuances” and simply see what is in front of them, while POC are more sensitive to this kind of treatment.

How young people can help

“Diversity = I am different, Inclusion = I am here, Belonging = I am heard” - Tonie Snell

Often, companies implement tokenism because they have pre-existing prejudices and biases from their youth and have never been educated about it. Throughout this article, I primarily discussed tokenism in adult environments because that is where it is common, but teenagers can do a lot to stop tokenism because changing your mindset from a young age can help to improve your adult life. Teenagers also might have internalized tokenism at school, clubs or any type of academic venture, and it is important you follow these steps to avoid tokenism.

Check your biases and let go of stereotypes. Are you naturally discriminatory to a certain kind of people? The key to having an inclusive environment is to truly let go of all biases you have against different genders, people or races and realize that they have different ideas and perspectives that are unique and can improve the environment. Even if you consider yourself an impartial viewer, you might still have these unconscious biases that lead you to pick and choose who you like.
Ask yourself the uncomfortable questions. “Do I really treat men better than women?” “Do I feel uncomfortable around people of the LGBTQ+ community?”
Listen. If you feel like you are tokenizing or receiving criticism, listen to it and make changes. Don’t ignore it.
Educate yourself. Experts state that white students’ views on diversity are “positively tied to having non-white friends.” If you have never experienced blatant racism or tokenism, you should research more about what racism is because you might be reinforcing tokenism without knowing or being ignorant towards it such as Matt from the example above.
Remember that it’s not about you. The benefit is for the minorities, not for yourself - oftentimes these companies want diversity so THEY can look better, but your primary goal should be to give opportunities to minorities that they might not have had before because of internalized racism.