With the push for racial equality bustling now more than ever, also comes a bevy of threats to the cause—and tokenism is just one of them.
What is tokenism?
Merriam-Webster defines it as “the policy or practice of making only a symbolic effort (as to desegregate)”. In other words, acts of tokenism are performative, perhaps to jump on a trend or avoid criticism.
Some obvious examples include influencers posting empty black squares on Instagram without so much as a caption or meaningful discussion; TV shows inserting minority characters into the mix only to define them by their skin colour; political parties putting forward POC candidates in races where they have little to no chance of winning.
Or for instance, when prime minister Scott Morrison changed just one word in Australia’s national anthem. from ‘For we are young and free’ to ‘For we are one and free’. This does almost nothing for inclusivity, yet the peanut-sized effort can and will be defended by many as “better than nothing”.
Across the ocean, several Singaporean social media users blatantly exhibited tokenism at the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement. Influencers swarmed to their digital platforms to show support for the movement, yet continued to turn their backs on xenophobia and racism in their own homeland.
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Tokenism also presents itself in discreet ways, behind closed doors and with an airy disposition. Think teachers displaying boomerangs in classrooms during Reconciliation Week, but neglecting to engage students in a discussion about Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples, their culture, history, or tools.
In Singapore, school students are encouraged to deck themselves in other races’ ethnic costumes and play traditional games on Racial Harmony Day. Yet they aren’t taught the deeper meaning behind the very fabric they don, or the stories that lie beneath these toys—what is the point of all this, then?
Something even as casual as looking to an Asian friend as the voice for all Asians is very much tokenistic.
In a way, it’s a fuss-free form of activism for non-activists. It’s an easy way out. It’s more of a tactic to satisfy the public than an actual attempt to fight against racism—all at the expense of the marginalised.
How do we solve this?
Recognising your privilege and acknowledging past mistakes is a great first step, but it doesn’t stop there. We need to work towards being better allies, or more specifically, accomplices.
Image credit: Brett Sayles via Pexels
Allies stand and act with marginalised groups and allow them to define the issue; promote voices instead of speaking over them; they do their own due diligence. Accomplices will go a step further and utilise their privilege to disrupt these hierarchical systems.
University of Wollongong lecturer Summer May Finlay describes allies as ‘proactive’, but may ‘become uncomfortable and even defensive’ when their privilege is called out. Meanwhile, accomplices are characterised as people who commit themselves entirely to addressing inequities ‘regardless of personal or professional cost’.
Daunting as it sounds, the benefit is well worth the work. After all, the movement is only as strong as the effort we put into it. Keep in mind that being an accomplice doesn’t equate to being without faults – we are all humans here – but it is your willingness to listen and learn that sets you apart from the tokenists.
At the end of the day, tokenists, allies and accomplices all have one thing in common (for the most part): we want to use our platforms for good. That said, this ‘good’ can’t truly happen without acknowledging and unlearning tokenistic habits.
In defence of tokenism
A classic argument in defence of tokenism is that these efforts are well-intended and at the very least help the cause, which is certainly better than nothing. The tricky part is these claims can hardly ever be disproven; after all, who’s to know what anyone’s true intentions are?
While this argument may very well be valid, it is precisely this mindset that allows tokenism to fly under the radar—and that’s what makes it all the more damaging.
In this sense, tokenism is like a trojan horse: it hinders the movement more than it helps it, yet packages itself in a neat little gift box that screams, “Hey, I’ve done my moral duty!”
And of course, not everyone can be an activist nor are they expected to be one. But it shouldn’t take being an activist to avoid perpetuating these performative behaviours.
Fantastic article Marie!
Although I was aware of tokenism and the term ‘allies’, I was not familiar with the concept of being an ‘accomplice’ in combatting racist behaviour. So thank you for enlightening me about it.
As an accomplice you must be an ACTIVE and COMMITTED participant – the occasional social media posts are nowhere near enough. I really appreciated your inclusion of Singapore, especially with Racial Harmony Day. It seems the conversation often stops at the surface level (aka the ethnic costume) and doesn’t take that step further to break down the crux of WHY this is needed or HOW can I help educate others?
I appreciate what you said about all these small actions being at the expense of the marginalised. I do believe some people would be horrified to think that what they thought was a good thing, a positive action, was actually exacerbating the issue at hand and creating more work for marginalised groups. Of course humans will err. But when certain occasions come up that bring marginalised groups’ issues to the wider population’s attention – tokenism abounds. For example, Aboriginal artists and activists on social media and the flooding of their dms’ and comment threads by non-marginalised people asking ‘educate us!!’. As you say – heart perhaps in the right place – but as many point out time and time again, this can add burden and trauma, which is not being an ally, and especially not an accomplice.
“the movement is only as strong as the effort we put into it,” is an excellent sentiment which as someone who had never heard the term accomplice, in this context and is reconsidering his efforts to see if he is an ally or accomplice, something really worth thinking about to make for better futures.
Maybe I should visit extended family more so I can help cub their behaviour rather than avoid it.
Coming from an ethnic background, I sometimes feel disadvantaged because I am not privileged like others. But I am grateful that you said those who are privileged, should take a further step and use their privilege to tackle racism. I was also encouraged when you pointed out we are allies, despite our differences. I definitely agree we can make a difference in our society, if we work together, defend those who are silenced or more disadvantaged.
Thank you so much for this article Marie. This article is a really articulate description of why tokenism is so harmful. I didn’t know about the accomplice concept before. However, it does make a lot of sense to me and it is useful to have that distinction. It is really hard to know people’s true intentions, especially on social media where so much activism is performative – and some may not realise they are being harmful in their tokenistic behaviours, which perpetuates the harm. As you said, looking within ourselves, recognising our privilege and admitting our own flaws is such an important part of the process in helping marginalised groups. I think that if more people were willing to admit that their own behaviours or their loved one’s behaviours were problematic, a lot more progress would be made. To create social change, those with more privilege need to be humble and realise that the causes of racial inequality are so much more ingrained within the systems of our society than we perceive and that many of us contribute to these systems in ways we don’t realise. There is so much we need to change.
A great read, thanks Marie.
I must say, the black squares period last year felt really uncomfortable, for exactly the reason you mentioned above, and I had many in-depth conversations with friends who took part about exactly why they were blindly sharing. Affirmation? Absolution?
Tokenism is really rife in theatre at the moment, particularly amateur theatre, from casting to production teams, and hearing and learning from others’ experience in the industry is something really important for everyone looking to continue a future in the arts, myself included.
It’s a critical discussion to continue having, and articles like yours are so great at laying out the problems with being tokenistic, or to be seen to be doing something, and what to do next…
Very insightful, Marie!
Last year with BLM was a crazy thing to witness on social media. I remember seeing people calling out a certain artist with great influence who has not posted the black square or the hashtags in the wonderful twitterland towards the end of the protests but it turns out they have donated millions of dollars to support the movement already and just decided to not publicise it.
Seeing that, it made me really wonder if people are actually informed on what BLM is. It is not just a hashtag and not just a trend but a movement. It really got me questioning if they actually care about the movement or do they just want to spread more drama on twitter and taint other people’s image.
The sentence “we need to work towards being better allies, or more specifically, accomplices” really stood out to me as it is something I haven’t really considered before. We all want to be supportive of those marginalised groups but in order for change to occur, those who are privileged or not marginalised must use their voices to draw attention to the issues impacting so many people’s lives.
From my perspective, the Black Lives Matter and black square on Instagram definitely was a sign of tokenism. I think a lot of people posted the square because everyone else was doing it and while it did draw attention to the issue, I don’t think it informed or educated people about the issue. Rather it just brought people’s focus to the topic without giving important information needed for individual’s to change their behaviours.
Great article Marie, it was very interesting!
I really enjoyed reading your perspective on this issue. I’ve had countless conversations with friends about how people portray themselves on social media. I remember scrolling through Instagram last year and my whole feed was full of empty black squares in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the benefits of social media is the ability to reach a large audience and raise awareness on issues. At first, I thought it was great that people were posting this, but then I thought ‘is this really enough?’. Like you said, you don’t really know people’s intentions and how they act in their communities.
I was really interested to learn about the main difference between allies and accomplices. University of Wollongong lecturer Summer May Finlay described in her article that accomplices ‘call out behaviour’ and ‘promote the voices’ of marginalised groups. We definitely need more of this.
Loved this article, Marie!
This is a great piece Marree.
I found this extremely informative.
Like the rest of us, I also had no idea about the ‘allies’ and ‘accomplices’ concept. I think that the BLM movement was a perfect example of tokenism. It was confronting how many people jumped on the bandwagon but could not discuss at length the historical and political background of this movement.
I think this is one of the many downfalls of instagram, users (and particular influencers) are putting on a display of how they want us all to perceive them and because of this, they choose to capitalise on movements.
I think we need to take into account influencers also are subject to trolling, if they don’t preach a certain idea or movement which is flooding social media at the time, they receive copious amounts of messages from followers belittling them for failing to use their platform to preach a certain messages.
It’s funny because some influencers were actually using protests to stage photoshoots of them walking amongst protests holding up BLM signs. But again, we don’t know the extent of their experiences, whether they are well informed or not.
This demonstrates how social platforms are complicating our society and unfortunately, I have no doubt this will continue to happen.
Top shelf Marie! This was very insightful and I looked back on it today as I was presenting Pano! I’m very sure I’ve perpetuated behaviour that could have been performative and tokenistic – this article really helps me navigate these issues in the future.
In terms of journalism, it’s so important to be genuine and thorough when reporting on issues such as BLM, Reconciliation Week or Indigenous round in the footy. It will be interesting to see how our employers deal with matters of race. I imagine there are many difficulties in the world of social media these days…
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