Where's the line between diversity and tokenism?

[DiegoPalacios]

I feel like the population demographics of whatever setting that your story takes place in should also affect whether or not you should include diversity or just minority characters in general, and if you do, whether or not that character's minority traits will be brought up by characters around them. If it takes place modern day or any setting where the population is diverse, then yeah be diverse with your cast.

This makes complete sense. In Marco Polo (the netflix show), most of the cast were asian, but it makes sense because it focuses the conflict between the huns and China.

There's this weird thing I've been seeing a bit in modern media a bit lately. It's kinda like there's TV shows and movies that will take place in modern day and feature minority characters, but their race/sexuality/etc. is constantly emphasized by themselves or by characters around them, even though it's more common these days that people won't bring it up or care (though that doesn't mean it never happens)

This seems like tokenism.

But then you have movies that are supposed to take place in like 1400s Europe and in the aristocracy, where most people there will be white, and there will be a random important character who's black and also part of the aristocracy. And the weird thing is that none of the characters around him will bat an eye or even mention how uncommon it is to see an aristocratic black person in 1400s Europe

For works that try to go for realistic portrayal of these times, it`s very odd. In fantasy settings, it can make more sense if racism is not an issue in the setting or if the conflicts is against orcs or something.

[darkone4587]

Honestly what defines Tokenism, at least for me, is when their race is all a character is. If there's nothing to them but they are that race then they are a token. If their race is only a part of them then they are a person, just like the way it is in life.

[oakiel]

I'm currently pondering a similar issue with

DEADPAN | Tapas

in a way that, of 10 main characters, there's two asian-americans, two black people, a mixed race guy, an indian woman and two hispanic men...
it did come naturally for them to have these ethnicities, they were never inserted to be the token [asian, black, mixed race, etc] characters, and they are each equally fleshed-out characters so i don't think it's tokenism necessarily, but i do ask myself if people are going to notice the variety and think it's a bit too "PC gone mad" or like i'm trying to check each box on the list of races .__.

[ar-ninetysix]

but i do ask myself if people are going to notice the variety and think it's a bit too "PC gone mad" or like i'm trying to check each box on the list of races .__.

OOH, this is a new point I haven't seen brought up yet. I was also self-conscious of that kind of thing too. I want to make a diverse cast, but I also have to the think about the population demographics like @zhengo said.

I feel like the population demographics of whatever setting that your story takes place in should also affect whether or not you should include diversity or just minority characters in general, and if you do, whether or not that character's minority traits will be brought up by characters around them. If it takes place modern day or any setting where the population is diverse, then yeah be diverse with your cast.

(I meant to make a mention of this part of your comment yesterday, but I didn't have much to say on it, so I just gave it a like in agreement ) But yeah, this played also part in the rest of my cast's appearances for the novel. I dunno, I feel like it'd be unrealistic that only one race survived a zombie outbreak, so yeah. I'm not as self-conscious about it now, thanks to reading these replies~

Unrelated, but your comic looked interesting and I took a look. Read it all and subbed already, keep it up, I'm real interested to see how it goes from where it's at right now~

[baasinsimple]

Don't try to please people, write them as people, not objects and keeping politics out of it always helps. No political quips or whatever and that'll help. If someone's gay don't make it go "I'm GAY" normal gay people don't do that, they treat relationships just like we do. same for someones ethnicity or whatever.