Misused: Token Minority

The example section for this trope is collecting a lot of misusage. This supposed to be for a flat minority character, instead it's just being used for minority characters in general.

Sorry, where does the description say that the character needs to be flat? Token Minority is any conscious effort to include a minorty to avoid Monochrome Casting. They don't have to be stereotypes. I think your interpretation of the trope is more narrow than the definition.

I didn't say anything about having to be a sterotype.

From the description

I personally would define the trope solely as "Token Minority is a character designed to get more minority groups into the plot."

I don't think a definition like that would work without confirmation from the creators.

I'm not at all sure that should be part of the definition. The idea that being a "token" character requires being a Flat Character is not something I have ever seen beyond this page; it feels like an arbitrary imposition onto the trope.

Something simalar is stated on the other wiki.

I've always thought a Token Minority is only in a work for appearance sake.

Which is not the same thing as being a Flat Character, though. Writing reasons vs. writing product.

There's a lot of "usually"s in there. Being a flat character is frequently a side effect of tokenism, but I don't think anyone else is trying to make it out as an integral part. I think it's definitely possible to have a token character that is well-written and rounded out - which means that we would be using a definition of Token Minority that excludes some token minority characters. That just doesn't make sense to me.

Thing is that if they're a well written and rounded character then they wouldn't be there just for appearance sake.

Er... no. You're getting too hung up on that phrase. A Token Minority is pretty much always a bad thing from a purely external viewpoint, but from a technical internal storytelling viewpoint, one can easily be well-written.

Tokenism is, at its essence, having a single character from a minority group in a cast. Everything else is analysis of why it's done or things that commonly go along with it, not a part of the actual "recurring pattern in fiction".

To put it another way, in The Rhetorical Show, the author makes most of the cast white, but decides to make Bob black in order to present the appearance of diversity. That decision - while likely to go along with other bad writing - doesn't inherently mean anything else about how Bob is written.

edited 27th Dec '13 1:22:23 PM by nrjxll

Then maybe the problem is the use of the phrase "token minority," which certainly has a lot of connotation along the lines of what the description currently says. Hell, it's probably why those lines are there in the first place.

I think it's possible to write a character whose only reason to exist is to fit a race quota in an elaborated and well-rounded fashion (after all, if all minority characters in my work are flat characters, that would raise even more race issues) - i.e to have a Token Minority character that isn't a Flat Character.

That's not the definition of Tokenism.

noun 1. the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, esp. by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce.

edited 27th Dec '13 1:23:19 PM by captainpat

Dictionaries are not good arguments, especially when we are talking on Token Minority and not Tokenism.

@Leaper: My whole argument is that it doesn't. Every discussion of tokenism I've ever seen beyond this definition treats it as simply being what it sounds like. It's usually described as bad writing, sure, but in an Unfortunate Implications sense, not in a flat character sense.

Okay, I don't think you actually understand what "perfunctory" means in this context. It's referring to the attempt "to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality".

edited 27th Dec '13 1:28:56 PM by nrjxll

I think that a true Token Minority needs to be a Flat Character rather than simply being the only minority in the cast. Consider, for example, Men in Black. Agent J was the only minority in the cast but would you call him a token? He was the lead and one of the most significant characters in the film.

Yes, I would, because "only minority in the cast" is what a token minority is. I don't know why this is hard to understand.

Edit: Actually, on second thought, I'm not sure I would, but only because Men in Black doesn't really have many main characters of any sort. In my experience, Token Minority is usually more of a concept applied to an ensemble cast.

edited 27th Dec '13 2:44:43 PM by nrjxll

Yeah, the only black main character out of two is not Token Minority.

Other than that, I agree that the character doesn't need to be a Flat Character, it's just an annoyingly common side effect.

edited 27th Dec '13 3:04:10 PM by Discar

What makes a "token" is that they're only there to provide nominal diversity. Most often that means that they're a Flat Character, because often the only real reason for them to be in the work is to defuse accusations of an -ism. But they don't have to be Flat to be Token.

edited 27th Dec '13 3:13:30 PM by Madrugada

Too bad there can't be a crowner on this, because I still maintain that the phrase "token minority," when said in relation to a fictional character, has very strong connotations of Flat Character.

I think you're confusing tropes that are frequently executed poorly for the trope itself. Most minority tropes are executed poorly. It doesn't mean they have to be.

Also, you haven't given us reason to restrict the trope to one of its most common results/connotations. The connotations and results that a trope often brings aren't by necessity an integral part of it.

I don't see anything wrong with the trope currently. Like Septimus said, what do we have to gain by narrowing it?

Technically, the Flat Character stuff is part of the trope currently. We're proposing getting rid of it, not adding it.