[1][2][3] The sociological purpose of tokenism is to give the appearance of inclusivity to a workplace or a school that is not as culturally diverse (racial, religious, sexual, etc.)
[6] In the book Why We Can't Wait (1964), civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. discussed the subject of tokenism, and how it constitutes a minimal acceptance of black people to the mainstream of U.S.
In the field of psychology, the broader definition of tokenism is a situation in which a member of a distinctive category is treated differently from other people.
[11] Linkov also attributes drawbacks in psychology to Cultural and Numerical Tokenism, instances that have shifted where value of expertise is placed and its effect on proliferating information that is not representative of all the possible facts.
[13] By definition, token employees in a workplace are known to be few; hence, their alleged high visibility among the staff subjects them to greater pressure to perform their work at higher production standards of quality and volume and to behave in the expected, stereotypical manner.
[13] In order to avoid tokenism within the workplace, diversity and inclusion must be integrated to foster an environment where people feel connected and included.
Anxiety, stress, exhaustion, guilt, shame and burnout can arise from overworking in efforts to become a good representative of their identity group.
[17] Women in STEM may experience greater performance pressure to work harder in a male-dominated field while also experiencing social isolation from the males within their workplace.
Reform measures include legislation mandating gender representation on corporate boards of directors, which has been the focus of societal and political debates.
[20] All-male boards typically recruit women to improve specialized skills and to bring different values to decision making.
[20] In particular, women introduce useful female leadership qualities and skills like risk averseness, less radical decision-making, and more sustainable investment strategies.
Sometimes they may actively work to exclude non-dissident members of their group, to preserve their social and political power within the movement they support.
[24] In fiction, token characters represent groups which vary from the norm (usually defined as a white, heterosexual male) and are otherwise excluded from the story.
[25][26] Tokenism, in a television setting, can be any act of putting a minority into the mix to create some sort of publicly viewed diversity.
[30] Research completed on token ethnic characters into the new millennium has found that the representation of males has grown in numbers, but has not improved in negative portrayal.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, cartoons were mostly racially themed, and depicted black people in "token" roles where they are only there to create a sense of inclusion.
Loyola Marymount University Professor of African American Studies, Adilifu Nama, has stated that this character is "a form of tokenism that placed one of the most optimistic faces on racial inclusion in a genre that had historically excluded Black representation.
[39] Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film Black Panther portrays the heroes of the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda as godlike.
They possess otherworldly sophistication by virtue of their blackness, in contrast to longstanding tendencies in mainstream film toward tokenism, stereotyping, and victimhood in depictions of people of African descent.
As a result, the film can function as catalyst for reflection on the part of viewers in terms of how they might perceive more clearly the complexity, variety, and ambiguity represented by blackness, whether others’ or their own, and how they, too, might identify with the Other.
[40] In G.B.F., directed by Darren Stein, the film tells the journey of two closeted gay teens, Tanner and Brent, on their quest to popularity in high school.
The three most popular girls in school: Fawcett Brooks, Caprice Winters, and 'Shley Osgood believe that the key to winning the prom queen title is through acquiring a gay best friend.