The Problem of ‘Tokenism’

 

“Tokenism” is the practice of choosing people for roles based on superficial qualities rather than intrinsic worthiness for the positions. Because it prioritizes identity over merit, it risks placing less qualified, underperforming individuals in positions of responsibility.

We have a particularly glaring example of tokenism in our current Vice President, Kamala Harris.

Then-candidate Biden announced in August of 2019 that he would “prefer” “someone who was of color and/or a different gender,” for his running mate, should he get the nomination. He claimed at the time that this wouldn’t be his primary consideration, and that the most important consideration would be that he choose someone who was “authentic and on the same page.”

He then chose a running mate who, as was obvious then even to Democrat voters who dumped her from the Presidential primaries as fast as they could, has nothing to recommend her save her sex and pigmentation. But that was enough: she ticked the two boxes guaranteed to get Joe a much-needed pat on the back from the left fringe of his party. She’s the first woman Vice President, and the first black Vice President, and a truly terrible Vice President.

Extraordinary people come in both sexes and all colors. One extraordinary black woman is currently the director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford. Another extraordinary black woman is an outspoken champion of women and their rights, a brave and tireless critic of Islamic oppression of women, and the founder of a foundation dedicated to those ends.

Unfortunately, the woman the Biden campaign chose is entirely bereft of qualification — even of the meager qualification of bland avuncular inconsequence that, with the assist of some rapidly-reinvented election laws, ushered President Biden into the Oval Office.

Vice President Harris’s cackling incompetence should not reflect on women in general, nor on black people of either sex — any more than President Biden’s shuffling incompetence, corruption, and encroaching senility is representative of men in general or of white people of either sex. It reflects only on the Vice President and the irresponsible people who put her one tired heartbeat away from the most powerful seat on the planet.

But the problem with tokenism — beyond tending to place people in positions for which they’re poorly suited — is that it achieves the opposite of the outcome its practitioners claim they want. Rather than furthering the interests of whichever demographic to which they’ve chosen to pander, it undermines — unfairly — individuals of that demographic. The next black woman to seek the Presidency or Vice Presidency will have to overcome the stain of the current one. There’s no justice in that, merely reality.

Tokenism is one of the most insidious and destructive aspects of identity politics. It rarely has the potential to be as catastrophic as a President Harris could be. Usually it merely hurts the institutions and individuals and identity groups involved. But the left’s obsession with tokenism and identity, and its relentless war against merit, will drag us all down — and most particularly those it claims to be helping.

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  1. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    I liked my original post title better.

    It’s still in the URL/URI.

    • #31
  2. GlenEisenhardt Member
    GlenEisenhardt
    @

    All the left does is tokenism. The masks they put on right before they come to the podium and take off when they think the camera is off is tokenism to show they care. They scream about climate as a token and then take jets to Europe. Biden is a moron and has always been a moron. But he was sold as the adult with character and experience when he was a token as well. He presented his crackhead loser son as the smartest man he’s ever known. Biden plagiarized his law dissertation and has been plagiarizing speeches from people with much bigger brains for decades. He lies about cornpop and how he wrote or had a major hand in every major piece of legislation the last 40 years.

    They appoint people based on race and not merit to show how they’re not racist when exclusion and inclusion of people based on race is racist. All of it is tokenism. And when the left stops being taken seriously and is instead laughed at, mocked, and castigated for all of this phony nonsense it will end. Biden can appoint some leftist loon to the court because she’s black and has female genitalia which all of a sudden just for this appointment female genitalia means she’s a female. Gender is a very specific thing when it comes to supreme court appointments. They needed an actual woman. Fake women with penises are for collegiate swimming and wrestling. 

    All of it is a joke and these people should score no more points for the first trans this and the first black that and the last time we had a vaginal person over here was in 1974 and blah blah blah. It all should be mocked and ridiculed to no end. That’s all it deserves. And that’s all tokens deserve whether they be racial tokens or moral tokens or whatever kind of meritless trash the left is selling us this week or next. 

    • #32
  3. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Very well put.

    The problem, of course, is that entirely too many people are – and always will be – too stupid to vote for better.

    • #33
  4. Jim McConnell Member
    Jim McConnell
    @JimMcConnell

    Django (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    W Bob (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    You know her ascendency points out two things is striking relief. Biden isn’t capable of even reading his way through a choreographed negotiation with a friendly president of an allied country, and Harris is literally a babbling fool.

    When she was directly asked a fairly complex (but not too complex) question by a reporter at a news conference about what all the US was doing to help Ukrainian refugees flooding into Poland (and Duda was asked if he was going to ask for US help) she turned to Duda quoted, cackling, “a friend in need…” and pushed the question off on Duda to answer his first. This gave her time to fabricate nonsensical words that sounded like an answer.

    I’m saying this for the first time. We are screwed.

    Pray for wisdom in dealing with Iran’s missile strike on US forces today.

    Still, I’d vote to remove Biden if I was in his cabinet. Harris is horrible but at least she has a working brain, in the medical sense of the term at least. Either way you look at it, that’s less dangerous than Biden.

    Just now a post pointed out that the former PR person for Zelensky in a now deleted tweet noted that she cackles when she’s uncomfortable. Talk about showing your hand. How’s she ever going to negotiate anything with any foreign power?

    Added: But even so, she still was the administration’s choice to send to talk with foreign PMs and presidents than Biden.

    Because Biden is a profoundly stupid, probably senile, old fool with a short temper, and whose filter is non-functional. He also thinks he’s the smartest person in the room. Not a good look for the US and those who put him in office.

    Yes. At least Harris isn’t able to commit the U.S. to doing anything. That unseemly cackle, though…

    • #34
  5. Jim McConnell Member
    Jim McConnell
    @JimMcConnell

    ddavewes (View Comment):

    Jim McConnell (View Comment):

    Both Joe and Kamala are international embarrassments. The late, great Mel Brooks couldn’t have written a more unlikely script.

    Mel Brooks will be surprised to learn that he’s deceased

    Oh, isn’t he? I thought he must surely be; he’s almost as old as I am, then. My apologies.

    Edit: I just looked Mel up on Wikipedia; he’s 95! No wonder I thought he was gone.

    • #35
  6. Django Member
    Django
    @Django

    When you’re in a hole, stop digging. She just can’t stop. 

    • #36
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