huh, thats an interesting point. I think maybe it does still exist but has somewhat evolved from its earlier more obvious form? I see a lot of shows nowadays with very diverse casts, but rarely the "exactly one of each with a white male lead" format. So maybe its just less obvious since the average show now includes more variety
General
From the looks of it, if we apply the default Five-Man Band model to this trope, then we'll most likely have the White Male Lead, the Male Minority Lancer, the White Chick, the Smart Minority Girl and the Big Guy.
Hi, I just stumbled across this page's entry on the show W.I.T.C.H. . As far as I know Irma and Will are Caucasian. Irma's mother being Hispanic is pure speculation. It is a popular fan theory, but should be labeled as such (either as "fanon" or "epileptic trees"). Will's mother is ambiguously brown, but Will clearly is not. She has pale white skin. Again, I would like to edit this page to mark fan theories.
- Pelswick has a five-token family. The title character is in a wheelchair, his father is white, his adopted sister is black, and his gran-gran is a senior citizen.
Okay, several points:
- Is Kate black? Even if she is, it's probably not obvious enough to qualify her for tokenism. She has the lightest skin in her family.
- Being a senior citizen in a family isn't very meaningful.
- Pelswick's family has five people in it; his little brother, Bobby, is pretty much "default" too.
- Pelswick himself is not a token. He was not added "for diversity" but because the show's creator liked having a mouthpiece to make fun of himself. His disabled status not defining him was the entire point of the show.
All things said, I don't think this example really fits.
Something's been bugging me lately: how do people go about creating a diverse cast without falling victim to or being accused of Tokenism? Especially if a character is a member of more than one minority? It seems like people just won't be happy: if there are no minorities represented, it's racist. If there's only one, it's Tokenism. If there's more than one different minority represented, it's Political Correctness Gone Mad!
Seriously, where's the line between legit diversity and Five-Token Band?
Edited by 24.250.8.30 Hide / Show Replies
A little late, so I apologize, but I agree with the above post. While some of the examples are legit, some examples scream to me: "Hey, the cast's diverse. This must mean that they're all tokens!"
Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought "token minority" means someone adding in a minority to a work of fiction so it doesn't appear racist, but the token acts in a stereotypical manner (like the token black guy in some movies/shows where he speaks in "hip urban lingo".) So if a character (or a group of them) is a minority, but they're not tokens and actually well developed (or at the very least, don't act in a stereotypical manner), do they count for this trope?
I think a clearer line needs to be drawn between Five-Token Band and Multinational Team. There's a lot of confusion between them. It might make more sense to highlight one as a "positive" trope and the other as a "negative" trope so there's less confusion - in other words, the Multinational Team is when the show has "legit diversity" while Five-Token Band is when the show uses tokenism.
Another option is to make one a "fact trope" while the other is a "YMMV trope". For example, Multinational Team can refer to the simple fact of having a multi-ethnic team, while Five-Token Band can become YMMV as to whether the show executes this properly.
EDIT: I just rewrote the two tropes to distinguish them; hopefully, these are not too drastic changes.
Edited by screennameless
Minor note on the page image: Extreme Ghostbusters would also be acceptable as an illustration of a Five-Token Band. The Kids Next Door, however, lacks a character in a wheelchair, which is vital to conveying the sheer tokenism.
Why was this trope so popular in the 1990s specifically? Along with Green Aesops, it was practically endemic to works of fiction produced in that era, but is much less common today. What happened?
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