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TOKEN_REMARKS

                                             June 11, 2020

I had some issues with a NYRB piece about "The
Watchmen" by Namwali Serpeli, and so I checked
her bio on the masthead: she's an associate prof      WHO_WILL_CRITICIZE
at Berkeley and an award winning Zambian writer.

So my first impulse is to leap to a
conclusion: she was brought in to
comment on the new Watchmen HBO series
because the show is about a black woman.             Actually, I don't think
                                                     her commentary is very
So were I a conservative weasel, I would press       good, and don't much
this into service as an example of "tokenism",       like her intellectual
an inferior commentator chosen because the show      style, but I suspect
itself is about a black woman.                       this is endemic among
                                                     literary intellectuals
But since I'm not (much) of a conservative (my       called in to write about
mammalian classification I will leave open), I'm     pop culture.
not really interested in going there, and am
instead tempted to suppress this remark.             I didn't (consciously?)
                                                     care very much one way or
Being the kind of guy I am, I've chosen to move      another that her name
it to this page, where I can mull over the           sounds "exotic" to me...
various side-issues here.  I prefer poking my
fingers in the wounds to pretending they're not
there...


   To start with: accusations of "tokenism" can be
   profoundly stupid.  Here's one from my own
   experience: I was once talking to a guy about a
   place we're we both used to work and conveyed the
   news that a particular woman we knew had been
   promoted to managment of a particular group.

   He immediate reaction was: "Oh man, that's a token!"
   He expanded on the point: "I'm sorry but that's just
   tokenism.  That group practically manages itself."
   And so, he claimed they just gave her the job so they
   could say they had a female group manager.

   The thing is, the group did indeed have a manager,
   and both of us had no doubts this woman was capable
   of managing the group-- he seemed to feel the group
   didn't *need* a manager, and yet I don't think he
   ever would've argued that the previous male manager
   should've been let go--

   Also, this particular woman was someone who had
   worked with management in organizing some cross-
   department functions.  I could see how she would
   come to mind if you were looking for a mid-level
   manager.  Should they have promoted a man to
   discourage accusations of reverse sexism?



   My impression that Serpeli was choosen because
   of skin color can be attacked on much the same
   grounds-- I have some complaints about her piece,
   but on the other hand she gets quite a few things
   right, and if they picked some other critic, they
   might very well have had other problems...

      For that matter, the NYRB had a review of a history
      of comics recently where I thought Art Spiegelman      Something like:
      himself managed to say one or two dubious things.      "At last there
                                                             are some works
                                                             about the history
                                                             of comics getting
                                                             published!" But
                                                             you know, I've
                                                             been reading
                                                             these much of my
                                                             life...

I will stop here for now, I think, the entire
subject makes me tired, and I don't know if
there's any where I can go with it...



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