Photo by Toffy Prakittiphoom ’24 / The Choate News
Growing up Black in a small school in suburban Pennsylvania was a challenging experience. Throughout my elementary and middle school years, I was always the kid asked to speak at school events or participate in community outreach activities. Oblivious to the concept of social politics, I thought that being selected to represent my school at these events was solely reflective of my notable academic performance and regular participation in the extracurricular activities at my school. What I didn’t realize for a long time was that I was essentially a walking advertisement for the school — an advertisement that falsely suggested that the school was a racially diverse community.
For years, I didn’t notice, nor did I really care, that I was being used. I was told that it was an honor to have these opportunities and I allowed myself to believe that. I was a young, impressionable, excitable kid — how could I not? While those claims may have had some truth to them, I now suspect that there may have been other motives at play, including those rooted in objectification and tokenization, to which I had been a victim.
What ultimately made me realize that my race was doing more to speak for the school than my words ever could was understanding the difference between meaningful representation and inclusion and their performative gestures. In the same way that there is genuine activism and performative activism, the motives behind promoting representation are just as important as the representation itself. I define tokenism as the practice of substituting genuine efforts to create self-sustaining initiatives that produce representative and inclusive outcomes for those that come from a place of inauthenticity or malice. In most instances, tokenization takes the form of using marginalized and oftentimes underrepresented members of a community to represent a larger group. In my case, it meant picking me — one of few Black students at the school — to speak in an attempt to promote a false sense of inclusivity within the school’s community.
Tokenism is detrimental to those that are being tokenized or those who share the same or similar demographics as the token and were not selected as the raffle winner. By participating in the sham, the tokens isolate themselves from others in their minority group, further entrenching the exclusion they already face. Moreover, additional stress is usually placed on these students, as they function as advertisements and are forced to uphold unrealistic standards of excellence. It’s as if the reputation and prestige of one’s entire race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., is put on your shoulders — that’s a lot to expect from anyone, let alone high school students.
Simply existing as an individual from a marginalized group is demanding, but being the token is much more difficult. Tokenization objectifies the individual, effectively strips them of their individuality, reduces them to a prop based on their skin color, gender, etc. and robs them of their voice; all of these factors become valuable assets in the business of advertising and raising the profiles of schools and companies. Often, it’s the same schools and companies that actively tokenize their students and employees that are the first to affirm their genuine efforts to help the minorities they are tokenizing. The difficult thing is, when you don’t care about the individuals behind those voices, you can’t uplift them.
When I was applying to high schools, I found Choate’s diversity statistics very attractive, and they played a critical factor in Choate becoming my school of choice. The practice of schools or institutions misrepresenting their enrollment numbers to give the false impression of being more diverse than they really are is not only deceptive, but also immensely harmful to their current and prospective attendees. I am not asserting that Choate is a perpetrator of this disrespectful and harmful inflation, but, from personal experience, I do not see or feel the ethnic and racial diversity that was advertised to me. It is lauded that Choate boasts a student body made up of 53% students of color. It’s unclear how that distinction is identified, leading the number to sound impressive but mean very little in actuality. Minority students’ participation in events such as functions for incoming students and promotional campaign events can be beneficial for representation; however, efforts must be made to safeguard against exploitation.
I have found that the perception of my “function” as a token makes balancing my social life with my other endeavors more difficult. Guilty and regretful thoughts often creep into my mind, questioning my compliance. Why do I continue to give in and say yes to these opportunities even though I harbor suspicions regarding how and why my abilities are being used?
As Choate boasts of its increased diversity statistics and advertises its eagerness to push for greater equity and inclusion, we need to question what these numbers really represent. We must continue to do what we can to meaningfully include and integrate those who may feel isolated from the tokenization and victimization they face on a daily basis.
