User:Sydneyadie/sandbox

One additionally relevant term for tokenism is "hyper-tokenism". Hyper-tokenism is where a person of color has increased screen time, is involved in the plot and in promotional images, but the white characters are still the most significant characters by the end of the film. Another relevant term is "ambiguously brown". Ambiguously brown characters are characters that are white-passing, but not fully white so that whatever they are cast in is not completely whitewashed.

Media Examples:

Hyper-Tokenism: One example of this is Finn in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens". In this movie, Finn (a black male) is knocked out during a big, climactic fight scene and he remains unconscious for the remainder of the movie. Though Finn is advertised as being a huge part of the movie, his character ends up being used as a stepping stone for Kylo Ren to get to Ray, his true target.

Tokenism: The CW show "The 100", though it has a lot of minorities cast, still displays ample tokenism with how these characters are used in the show. Lincoln plays the "scary black man" trope before he's more humanized by his white love interest and then ultimately killed off. Raven Reyes is hypersexualized or tortured during her screen time. Wells Jaha is killed off in season one. On top of this, the only LGBT representation the show includes is when character Clarke and Lexa become an item, but Lexa is soon killed off for shock value. Another show with tokenism is the CW show "Riverdale". In this teen drama, Kevin Keller is the only gay character in the ensemble cast. He has very little significance to the actual plot and has way less screen time than other characters. When he is on screen, he plays a stereotyped flamboyant gay teen.

History of Tokenism:

Black characters being the first characters to die was first identified in Hollywood horror movies of the 1930s, notes writer Renee Cozier. More recently, not a single actor of color was nominated for the 2015 or 2016 Oscars. Around this time, minorities accounted for 12.9% of lead roles in 163 films surveyed in 2014, according to the 2016 Hollywood Diversity Report.