Argumentative Essay On Tokenism

The term “Tokenism” is maybe something the average person has never heard of. Tokenism is defined as “ the policy and practice of making a perfunctory gesture towards the inclusion of members of minority groups” If you look at any television show you watch or even movie for the most part you will always find at least one use of tokenism. There 's a token black guy who either acts like he is from what people have deemed the ghetto or he is soulful and acts like he’s from the south.There 's sometimes a token gay character that is always portrayed as a flamboyant white male with a high pitched voice and a love for fashion.The less common token is the love interest token which is the girl that the awkward main character has loved since forever but she has herself wrapped around some other guys finger.Although not all characters that fit these demographics the stereotypes are very profound and it’s what most people imagine when they think of that type of human.The result of tokenism in the modern media is a wave of narrow-mindedness and demographic profiling against minorities. If you think about your favorite television shows there is a big chance that you can name all of the …show more content…
There are rare cases when you see a show or movie with an asian or hispanic or middle eastern lead. “almost never do Asian male characters have love interests in movies. And more often than not, if an Asian female character is the main love interest, she 's being fought over by a white guy and an Asian guy, with the white guy ending up with the girl.” That shocking trope was pointed out in an interview with John Cho and Kal Penn ,stars of movie series ‘Harold and Kumar’.(“Diversity (or the lack thereof) In Media”) Stereotypes similar to that consist of the asian character always being labeled as the ‘intelligent and stoic” character or given a strong accent and an inability to speak clear english, only a broken