Hello, How do you avoid tokenism in a world of so many groups and combinations of groups[?] Tokenism is where you only add in one person of another group to make it look like you haven't discriminated. This can apply to things like television programmes, books, bank notes and jobs. People don't like this as they don't think that one person is enough. However, if there are so many groups to include to not discriminate [as people don't like discrimination either], how can you do this without tokenism? Also, in terms of books, how can you write a character of a different gender/age/race/sexuality etc. without being or knowing people from these groups? Baring in mind I'm the kind of person who really hates talking to people as they're so bad at it [regardless of groups that other person is in]. Thank-you.
"A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others." -William Faulkner. I guess, as a writer myself, I tend to always come across the saying that to be a better writer you have to read. Read everything your hands come upon, be it boring or not. Pay attention to how it is written, how the characters are written, how they react, what is their background. If you don't know how a character should act because you weren't raised in that environment then go to forum and anonymously ask those who are from that environment of group you don't know much about. Also remember that you can't make everyone happy. When I write I stick true to the story and the place it is set. If its in medieval Europe then there won't be many, if any, people of color simply because in those times there weren't many if any. But if its present day America then I will have a variety.
Tokenism isn't all about having a character there "just because": an easy way to identify tokenism is to look at the character themselves. If they have a very one-dimensional personality or are a stereotype (or you could replace the character with a cardboard cut out of them and no real difference would be made to the story), then it's obvious that a character is just there as a token. Therefore, you can avoid it by say, making up a personality that belongs to a completely blank human, and then add in things such as gender, race, religion etc. Or by just character-building.
