Some thoughts on race, part 4--Tokenism

"Some of my best friends are [fill in with whatever group you're trying to show that you don't dislike, distrust, disdain, etc.]."  At the moment--and probably the original use, it's "black."  

People who used that line thought they were proving their unbiased, not racist, not prejudicial attitudes.  To most people in the "friend" group, it demonstrated precisely the opposite.  #1, no, they aren't.  The person saying it didn't have best friends in the other group.  #2, if they did, it wasn't some, because it wouldn't take many black friends before you'd hear a bit of the frustrations and concerns of black Americans.  Or, #3, they weren't really best friends because the black person kept those difficult concerns private...in the expectation that airing the concerns would just earn rejection or dismissal.

In any case, this is a brand of tokenism--in this instance, engaging or focusing on a small number of people from a particular group as a way of saying you've engaged that group.  

Tokenism is simplistic.  It undermines the complex realities of life.  People are not what their token looks like, and the token isn't even all that you wish the token to be.

Tokenism is unkind.  It reduces people to caricatures, and puts an awful burden on the token individual.

Tokenism is lazy.  It allows you to forgo the work of finding out about people.

Facebook is rife with tokenism right now.  Opponents of Black Lives Matter, or people who are angry that protests have turned ugly and violent (and tend to blame all protesters for that), or people who otherwise disagree with the claims of the protesters, and so on, are posting the material from this or that black conservative and saying, 'see, this black person is against Black Lives Matter (or, the protests, or something else about the myriad claims regarding the issues).'

Some people will even say, "and this person is NO token," which immediately instigates the anxiety that that is precisely what the person is.  Why else would you bother to point it out?

Former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice has been offered in this fashion.  She has various conservative bona fides, she's also black and so her name got dropped in what I've here called the Token way.

She wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post. In it, she was measured and circumspect with her language, but declared "[George] Floyd’s horrific death should be enough to finally move us to positive action." She goes on to explain that "systemic change is necessary to make our institutions more just."

Condoleeza Rice definitely has the conservative credentials--she served the country faithfully under both President Bushes. But she's got black American bona fides as well. She bootstrapped her way to success...out of Jim Crow Birmingham, AL, no less. And she's endured racism is large and small ways.

So, what to do? Should I claim the prize for "the best NOT a token black commentator"? Or should I say, try not to use tokenism in support of your claims?

I'm going with the second one.