Fixing Tokenism

       As all of you know, recently in class we have been discussing TV Tokenism, the inclusion of a few minority characters in minor roles for the sole purpose of creating the appearance of diversity. Mr Bolos made a pretty compelling case that tokenism is real and pervasive in our culture.
       Something I've been thinking about, and one part of the issue we haven't discussed yet (but probably will in the next few days), is how to fix tokenism. The problem is that tokenism is not a simple problem to fix. It's a natural consequence of the way TV shows work. The shows only exist to attract viewers for commercials, and they reflect the fact that whites make up the largest target audience of those commercials. People are more comfortable and connect more with characters who look similar to them. It's not a matter of racism but of human nature. Humans empathize more with people who are similar. Shows need to make an impact with viewers to create a following, so they cast whites in the lead roles.
      Because the phenomenon is so deeply rooted in the nature of television and the personalities of Americans, it is not an easy issue to address. Like the social issues we talked about in our reconstruction plans, tokenism is a very difficult problem to solve with government intervention or any type of large scale program. The government can't just force the networks to cast minority leads; to do so would be unconstitutional. It would be very nearly impossible to design a program that would change people's attitudes on a scale necessary to make a real difference. It would also be impractical to try to fix this problem using public shaming,  the methods the NAACP several years ago. It's a lot harder to get people outraged over "the inclusion of minority characters but only in minor roles with simple parts" than it is to create outrage over "the total lack of minorities in TV."
    I believe there really is no practical way to fix tokenism from the outside. There is another possibility, though. Tokenism may be self-defeating; the presence of characters of different races may work away at the subtle biases responsible for tokenism in the first place. Despite not being an optimal situation, the portrayal of race in television has clearly improved over the last few decades. Our generation is growing up in a cultural environment where it is routine to see minority characters acting out normal roles. They may not play lead roles, but largely thanks to tokenism we at least see Black characters and Asian characters and others. I believe the biases we still have are being eroded, and that eventually we will reach a point where tokenism kills itself off.

Image Credit:http://digthatbox.com/arcade_token_gallery.html

Nostalgia

       For Christmas this year I got my dad a new book by Stephen King, 11/26/23, about a time traveler's attempt to stop the assassination of JFK (and named after the on date which it occurred). After he finished it, he recommended I read it. I started it, and found it was actually pretty good. The book is partly historical fiction, and it touches on a lot of ideas we have been talking about when we discuss the social conditions of life in the 60's. One particular passage struck me as being extremely relevant, both to what we have been discussing recently in class and to a theme I had thought about myself in the past. The author is talking about the restrooms at a gas station in North Carolina:

"The third sign was an arrow on a stick. It pointed toward the brush covered slope behind the station. It said COLORED. Curious, I walked down the path... There was no facility. What I found at the end of the path was a narrow stream with a board laid across it on a couple of crumbling concrete posts.... If I ever gave you the idea that 1958's all Andy-n-Opie, remember the path, okay? the one lined with poison ivy. And the board over the stream."

I noticed this passage specifically because earlier in the book, I did notice how positive King was about almost everything in the past, how he seemed to portray the 1960's as some sort of utopia when  people were friendlier, there was no such thing as airport security, and everything was basically perfect. The very first thing the main character does when he comes to the past is buy a root beer float, which he described as one of the greatest things his 21st century taste buds had ever tasted. It had started to bug me. Nostalgia is part of being human, and people always yearn for the past, but it seems to me that nostalgia often leads to the belief that everything was better in the past; that back in the day, things worked the way they should. Sentiments like that have always bugged me. They simplify events, and rely on cliches as proof. As King points out, there were serious problems with society in which significant progress has been since "The good old days". Root beer floats may have tasted better, but is that important if a chunk of the population can't buy that float from the same counter as the rest? It's my personal belief that, despite worries about climate change, societal decline, swine flu, or anything else, the world is steadily becoming a better place.

American Industry

       My job in my reconstruction group was to come up with a way to remedy the effects of physical damage to the south from the war. One of the more interesting consequences of this problem was the correlation between the damage to farms and poverty of white farmers. Many lower class whites made a decent living off of farming before the war. During the war, however, many of those farms were destroyed; with their farms damaged, many relatives and workers dead, and any money invested with the confederacy gone, white farmers plunged into poverty by the thousands. When I read about their situation in Foner, I was struck by how similar the statuses of poor whites and former slaves were. Both groups were in debt, and trapped doing farm-work that could barely support them. The freedmen obviously were in a worse situation because of discrimination, but both groups suffered from the same basic problem; the total lack of decent work. When I finally figured out this was the problem, I immediately remembered the State of the Union address, in which President Obama spoke on a similar issue with the American job market today.
       I also remembered President Obama's proposed solution: relocating industry from foreign countries back to the U.S. I realized this could work in the south as well. The primary problem with the south's economy was a dependence on agriculture, and the only way to fix that problem was to increase industry. The obvious industry to focus on was textiles, because of the south's huge supply of cotton. I had found my answer: subsidize American textile companies, in an attempt to siphon some of those industrial jobs from Britain, thereby (hopefully) creating jobs for former slaves and white farmers.
       I was surprised at the parallels I found between the problems of the past and of today, and how easily ideas can be applied to very distinct and different times. It is normal to think about learning from history for help with today's problems, but it is very weird to think about learning from today to help solve yesterday's problems. I'm not totally sure what the lesson is here, but it sure is an interesting thought.

Image credit: http://19thhumanitiesschool.blogspot.com/2010/10/pictures-relating-to-industrial.html