TOKENISM

Source- The Hindu

What is Tokenism?

It is an act of doing something to show that a person/company is including people from minority or marginalized groups, but without sincerity & without showing an intent to increase diversity and promote inclusivity.

Origin of the term:

• According to Laws, the token is permitted entrance, but cannot fully participate.
• All the formal requirements are met for entrance into a group but do not possess the ‘auxiliary Characteristics’ especially race, sex, and ethnicity that are expected of persons in that position.
• Tokens are never permitted by insiders to become full members and may even be ejected if they stray too far from the special niche outlined for them.
• Majority of women there remained concentrated in typically female jobs. Among those who did move into management positions, many failed to achieve equality with men.
• As tokens, women are scrutinized more, felt overwhelmed to perform and tended to overachieve or underachieve.
• Being tokens also psychologically impacted women, who either went out of their way to emphasize their outsider status to become insiders without fully succeeding.

Counter-Production:

• Tokenism is the act of doing something to show that a person/company is including people from minority or marginalized groups, but without sincerity and without showing an intent to increase diversity & promote inclusivity.
• The members of a group whether women or black people or people from lower castes are hired only because of their difference from other dominant members like men, white people, and higher castes.
• For instance, in a company hiring more women is an easy, temporary fix to a structural problem & gives the company evidence of no discrimination in the workplace.
• In such scenarios, the hires or tokens become mere props or symbols.

• Tokenistic acts can be dangerous and counter-productive for the tokens like they do not change prejudices about the community in question; on contrary, they may reaffirm them.
• For instance, if a black man in a film dominated by white men and women is depicted as brutish and hypersexual.
• They don’t contribute to diversity, for diversity is more than just mere representation.
• For example, if a woman is hired at a male-dominated workplace but her ideas/inputs are not considered which defeats the purpose of hiring her so that the company can have diverse views.
• They provide some ammunition to those engaging in these acts to ward off critics.
• For instance, in films, having tokenistic characters allows directors to escape the responsibility of doing some serious research on the character’s historical, political & cultural background and accurately portraying her with nuance.

Fighting tokenism

• To be inclusive, requires effort, time & long-term view.
• While symbolic gestures like replacing a word in the anthem, are important, they are far from sufficient. Symbols must be backed by concrete action.
• Portraying a gay character in a film or series is mere tokenism unless that character is well written with a definite arc like the other characters and has a purpose in the story.
• Tokenism can be felt at the individual level, the institutional level and the systemic level.
• Unless there are efforts, both short & long term, at all three levels, true diversity and inclusivity will remain a chimaera.