Racism: “I’m only attracted to white men because of their superior Aryan blood.” Not racism: “I’m only attracted to white men.” Tokenism: “Oh no, my story doesn’t have any black people. Let me shoehorn one in.” Not tokenism: “My story is all white guys and one black guy, that’s just the way their characters are. I didn’t really consider their race as important.”

Both of those are racist, one is just more racist than the other. Both of those kinds of stories fail to treat the experience of black characters seriously, one just does a worse job than the other.

Racism and tokenism, like so many other things, are sliding scales, not an on/off switch.

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