The Proposition by Suboor Saifi
Tokenism is a symbolic gesture that involves treating a group of people differently especially in workplaces. It manifests largely as a public display of support with little credence to effective ground level reforms. For example, companies capitalise on social movements like Pride Month by incorporating rainbow into everything from their logos to website interface. In reality, it is merely a step to whitewash their wrongdoings by creating a façade of inclusivity and openness, only to hide their ongoing and historic malpractices.
While it is often aimed at creating awareness about an issue, claiming even tokenism helps educate people to some extent. However, what this so-called need to spread the message does is further aggravate the issue of adequate representation. The affected people who are the actual stakeholders are systemically silenced when influential brands jump into this. They use these movements according to their comfort and end up creating false narratives about the movement. Like rainbow capitalism, a targeted inclusion of the gay community has acquired sufficient purchasing power to generate a market-focused specifically on them. The arenas of such targeted inclusion are bars and nightclubs, LGBT tourism, or specialised culture consumption.
The modus operandi involved in tokenism shows a very general trend where institutions use a few people of any marginalised section, put them on a pedestal, and exploit their identity to appear trendy, relevant, and more accepting. In the US, after the civil rights movements of the 1960s, a small number of black people were employed in white-collar jobs or predominately white spaces, in an effort to weaken the movements against racial discrimination. This in turn was used to weaken the social movement by citing such examples and show that racial discrimination “doesn’t exist”.
For highly diverse societies most movements are based on the idea of inclusivity of people who have been ostracised for years, in order to bring them into the mainstream. Over time, it is also seen that such symbolic gestures are often used by people for aesthetics, often promoting cultural appropriation, leading to cultural stereotypes, affecting these alienated communities instead of fulfilling their basic social duties on humanitarian grounds by using their social and financial capital in uplifting culturally oppressed people. Brands in turn fetishise the misery of these people to appear quirky and garner the attention of the larger public, subverting them for the fancy of their billboards and ad campaigns.
Even though tokenism provides a good kick start to any social or cultural movement, it often leads to the hijacking of movement as what is seen in most social movements be it pertaining to caste atrocities, religious persecution, and even environmental causes. How few “privileged” people hijack the whole movement with their charisma and influence over media, to satisfy their ingrained saviour complex.
Tokenism helps a social movement by adding to the numbers of the movement which are needed by them because they are often anti-establishment and could die off very easily if the establishment were to attack it and it didn't have the strength to retaliate, but it is also inevitable that in a long run for a movement to make a significant impact it needs genuine support which continues to exist till the very end. While most of these tokenistic "supporters" are here for the optics or for virtue signalling, when things get tough, or when it shakes their position of privilege or power, they'll abandon the movement, or when they see the movement move away from their comfort levels. Movements have died in the past because they lost supporters.
Thus, they create this façade of support that the movement had banked on, and then suddenly withdraw. This breaks the morale of those with honest causes to be a part of the movement, as well as devalues the movement itself.
While the case of oppressor vs oppressed continues to exist as the people who were once the prevailing gatekeepers start preaching for such models. These very obvious tactics by brands affect the stakeholders by reducing their very identity to their one particular trait that makes them “conventionally” distinct, doing more harm than good.
The Opposition by Shreya Shukla
It’s Women’s Day and a news channel decides to switch their all-male panel with an all-female one because why not? It’s Women’s Day after all. What about the other 364 days? Who cares? They have proven they aren’t sexist or misogynist and that is what matters.
Do tokenistic gestures even in their most vile and rudimentary form have to be met with such censure when they can be let off with the same pat on the back with a ‘Needs improvement’ certificate? “There is room for improvement” can be said about anything under the sun and above it but do actions like this help garner greater support for a cause and help make room for marginalised people? If yes, then isn’t it reason enough for such actions to be seen for what they achieve than what they may have been intended as?
As Adam Smith rightly said “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”. Moreover, we aren’t talking of individuals here but big corporations that thrive on self-interest, I don’t see why they would go out of their way to ensure something that is achieved through the bare minimum of actions which they are fully aware of being perceived as tokenistic by some.
Rather than categorically asserting your demands thinking that it’s something you deserve and are entitled to, you start with a small and harmless one followed by what you wanted to accomplish in the first place. Essentially, foot-in-the-door of big corporations that are reflections of people they cater to, who make the society and the system.
An otherwise black and white logo of a company decides to go rainbow for a month and it works! They are successfully able to attract the target group by showing that they believe in their cause. This acts as positive feedback to either expand on the same, capitalising on the support they are enjoying or continuing with tokenism with the possibility of it eventually backfiring. Either way, it looks like a win-win to me.
Why can’t symbolic gestures be seen as a form of celebration of a movement, culture and everyone involved over an obsession with what it truly means? When all’s said and done, facts seldom change people’s minds. Emotions do. When a corporation people have faith in stands for a cause, it is impactful however intangible it may seem. Support for a movement doesn’t necessarily imply that the company is quintessential of what it advocates but that it is on the right path.
The association of social movements with symbols has a long history and for good reason. Be it
the latest three-finger salute used by pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar inspired by Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games, the holding up of George Orwell’s 1984 in Thailand or rainbow-coloured flag worldwide. Having a widely recognised symbol for a movement and then lambasting those who use it is shooting oneself in the foot. You want more and more people to know about what you stand for and what your demands are but at the same time, you want to be selective about who gets to hear it. Even if some people do it out of conformity in an attempt to look more acceptable in society, it only helps the movement. In fact, symbols are designed to make the movement easily recognisable to get mass appeal and show support that 'you’re on their side'. It is not just convenient and appreciated but why it is successful to begin with. More people and organisations joining in to celebrate the socio-political victory of a movement should be seen as a victory in itself.