Welcome to English as a language.
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Here’s an interesting side issue:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/black-ish-nfl-players-kneel-episode-105412968.html
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Still not quite fast enough for BoingBoing: Disney and ABC stand by as Roseanne Barr spews racist filth
It’s good that you’re calling attention to it, guys, but she tweeted at midnight West Coast time and it was 7am when that post went up. Give the people in charge time to get out of bed, hey?
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Dude is downright smug. It’s infuriating.
That’s before you even get to his rather problematic views on many other issues (such as vaccinations).
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In the context it’s being used here, “tokenism” is not intended to carry any connotation of inferior skill or work ethic. In fact, it usually goes the other way; the “tokens” are often exceptionally talented people. “A woman needs to be twice as good as a man to get the same recognition” etc.
What’s being criticised here is not the individual in the position (1). It’s the liberal ideology that placing representative individuals in positions such as these is an effective means of dealing with structural racism/classism/sexism/etc.
Dungey could be the most skilled, virtuous, ethical producer in the history of television, and it wouldn’t matter. Because she is working within a structurally racist/classist/sexist system, and her presence does not meaningfully alter the fundamental structures of that system.
Some of the discussion from under that Tweet might be illustrative:
The class issues raised by Cornel West are a somewhat separate thing from the tokenism/representation debate. Cornel’s thing is more about “rich people act like rich people, no matter where they came from”.
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(1) Mostly. She’s getting a bit of shade on the basis of “you didn’t see this coming? Really?”.
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Does this have anything to do with le jeu du prochain train?
It was important to clarify that, given that most people hear the term in a very different context.
I would argue that it does in this case. As I said above, I do not think that the system known as ABC would have cancelled this lucrative and popular show so quickly if a woman of colour had not been in this position. Representation does matter because it has the potential to change the system, and it’s a better alternative than letting no-one but old white men continue to run the system and preserve its racist and sexist elements.
That’s an unusually unsophisticated take from West. There are many types of wealthy people acting in very different ways (and not just on the basis of ideology but also on the basis of personal and professional priorities).
She absolutely deserves criticism for greenlighting the show in the first place, as I pointed out earlier. However, I’m willing to hear her side of the story (which will likely have involved a lot of lobbying from Sara Gilbert and Wanda Sykes).
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To be fair to Dr West, that was my extremely truncated shorthand summary of his position. He’s well aware of intersectional issues; that’s his point, really.
Does a Black landlord have a different experience to a White landlord? Yes. But he’s still a landlord, and that matters to his tenants. Their interests are not always compatible.
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I can’t imagine caring in the slightest if Maher vanished from view. I guess I was never a fan of him or his politics (which I’m not altogether clear on. Is there an asshole category? He seemed to fit comfortably there.)
I also don’t see the appeal of his humor. Maybe that makes me humorless, but I don’t think so. I think his humor appeals to people different than me.
Roseanne—I never saw the appeal, but I’ve always been hyperspecific in my choice of entertainment as a teenager/adult. Since there were no spaceships in the show, I refused to watch. Shows with a laugh track, I guess, just aren’t my thing.
It’s odd. I can remember conversations with parents about “opening up my mind” concerning my choice of entertainment. But looking back, I don’t have the regret I see a lot of people are expressing over creators like Roseanne when it’s revealed how horrible they are.
I had no special insights into racism or her character, certainly, but at least I have no regret over watching her stuff. At least the shows with spaceships were memorable to me.
Maher expressed skepticism at germ theory of disease and vaccines. He had no place to, it wasn’t contextually funny, but that was one of the last straws with him personally.
Also, I’m atheist, but not to put too fine a point on it, I’d take the company of a reasonable/rational theist over any mean-spirited atheist shoving fistfuls of Dunning-Kruger into his mouth any day.
That stuff’s sticky and it gets everywhere when they suddenly decide to talk.
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I’ve always understood it as one of those phrases that has graduated from ‘used seriously’ to ‘used ironically’ over time - though I guess there’s always room for a few outliers
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How 4chan is reacting to the Roseanne cancellation:
(spoilered for violently racist nastiness)
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I’ll put a Pottsylvanian Nickel on McArdle. I hope she gets there by way of Thomas Jefferson and concludes that the second amendment should be the first.
That’s very well researched. 
Seconded.
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BTW:
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Not always compatible, but also not always incompatible either. Are all landlords slumlords? Do all landlords offer only luxury rentals? Do all landlords discriminate against black people like Fred Trump did? Did it make a difference to black renters when all landlords were white? These are the questions that West avoids, because intersectionality impacts both parties.
For the moment, getting rid of private ownership of property is a fantasy (the Soviets couldn’t achieve it, with often unjust landlord/ownership status reverting to the state and its functionaries). While such a system exists (whether it’s a TV network or a property rental business) there are different ways of operating within it, and in that context representation matters.
I don’t want to get too far off topic here, so I’ll leave it at that.
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Got a feeling West has never been out there shouting “#notalllandlords!”
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Eh?
Cornel West is not a Democrat; he’s firmly in the “both parties are the problem” camp. And I don’t think he avoids those questions.
But we can leave this for later; intersectionality is an in-depth sorta topic.
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More from Black Twitter:
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To spell it out: being criticised on Twitter or losing your job is not a “brutal backlash”.
This is a brutal backlash:
The routine media hyperbole surrounding the critique of white racism is itself racist as all fuck.
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I think the bigger question is why these people don’t use a pseudonym if they’re going to post online.
