Editing Tokenism (section)

==In politics==
In politics, allegations of tokenism may occur when a [[political party]] puts forward candidates from under-represented groups, such as women or racial minorities, in races that the party has little or no chance of winning, while making limited or no effort to ensure that such candidates have similar opportunity to win the nomination in races where the party is safe or favoured.<ref>{{cite news|last=Duffy |first=Andrew |title=More women, fewer chances |date=9 April 2011 |page=B3 |url=https://www.pressreader.com/canada/ottawa-citizen/20110409/298186695737023 |access-date=16 July 2018}}{{Failed verification|date=July 2018}}.</ref> The "token" candidates are frequently submitted as [[paper candidate]]s, while nominations in competitive or safe seats continue to favor members of the majority group.<ref name=paradox/>

The end result of such an approach is that the party's slate of candidates maintains the appearance of [[diversity (politics)|diversity]], but members of the majority group remain overrepresented in the party's [[caucus]] after the election—and thus little to no substantive progress toward greater inclusion of underrepresented groups has actually occurred.<ref name=paradox>{{cite book|last1=Kanthak|first1=Kristin|last2=Krause|first2=George A.|year=2012|title=The Diversity Paradox: Political Parties, Legislatures, and the Organizational Foundations of Representation in America|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0199891740}}</ref>

Legal scholar David Schraub writes about the use of "dissident minorities" by political movements to give themselves a veneer of legitimacy while promoting policies that the majority of the minority group opposes. He uses the examples of [[Anti-Zionism|Anti-Zionist]] Jews and [[Black conservatism|African-American conservatives]], both of which dissent from their demographic group's consensus position on matters critical to their group's collective liberation or interests. These "dissidents" from minority groups are accused of either allowing the majority to tokenize them, or willingly tokenizing themselves as a shield against complaints and accusations made by the rest of that minority, and an excuse for the majority to avoid addressing or considering the concerns of the minority in question. Sometimes they may actively work to exclude non-dissident members of their group, to preserve their social and political power within the movement they support. Schraub contends that the majority of the movement dissident minorities support values them not for their contributions but for their identity, since more weight is given to people of minority background when talking about issues concerning that minority. If they break ranks and criticize their political movement, they often find themselves shunned, since they are no longer a reliable token.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Schraub |first=David |date=3 August 2020 |title=The Distinctive Political Status of Dissident Minorities |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/distinctive-political-status-of-dissident-minorities/11441BB38BE35E31D50EFD0EAC9F455C |journal=American Political Science Review |language=en |publisher=Cambridge University Press |volume=114 |issue=4 |pages=963–975 |doi=10.1017/S0003055420000659 |issn=0003-0554 |access-date=14 November 2024|doi-access=free }}</ref>