Like it or not, it is a real thing.
TV Tokenism is when a director is forced to hire an African American for a television show so that the television isn't 100% Caucasian. You will never in today's TV, find a drama starring an African American, but because they are needed on TV to prevent the network from being sued by NAACP, they will give them small parts and never as much screen time as they deserve. Whether or not this is a problem is up to you. Some thing to think about is the fact that an average American spends 14 years of their life watching television! That can change any one's perspective of a race or social group, and as a matter of fact, it does! When you are watching a show with the
"black guy" always killing people and robbing the banks and the
"white guy" there to save the day, or get him out of the slums of the ghetto, your feeling about people change no doubt. This is almost having the networks work against what
NAACP stands for.
Unfortunately the people in America with the most money are Caucasian and are between 25-50 years old, so they have to produce TV shows that catch their attention, many of them don't yet feel comfortable with an African American starring in a television show, saving the day. This brainwashing starts when kids are little even, starting from when they flip on the Disney Channel. There is a show that most kids are familiar called "The Proud Family" and what I have noticed is that the father eats chicken for dinner everyday, they have the friend that has 12 brothers and sisters under the age of 14, and their mother has never been married. Also the only sport that is ever played is basketball. This is just a great big exaggeration of what people have stereotyped them for a comedy effect. Another show on Disney would include "Suite Life of Zack & Cody" where these two little boys fool the hotel manager, who happens to be African American, so that they can get away with everything and anything. Is him being African American just a coincidence or could it be tokenism and the fact that they needed to pop an African American in there somewhere, so why not be the gullible one?
When tragedies and epidemics start, television shows are created to give their audience a time in the day to get the stressful times out of their minds. Sounds about right, don't you think? While everyone was running around not knowing what to do during the AIDS epidemic that's when vampire movies started to spring up. Since many people today are worrying about the war on terror, They have many television shows about the government and trying to bring them down, as in 24. So if people are trying to get their minds off of what's happening in the world around them, why are directors making so many of the same shows?
