Tokenism

After all the talk about tokenism in modern day dramas it really made me think critically about how this was going on. during class we were asked the question if anyone knew a TV show that had an african american person as the main character. frankly i could not. the closest thing i could think of was in the tv series Friday Night Lights. For each episode of the show it seems that there is a new main character. one episode it is the white coach or the white quarterback and another episode it is a african american runningback. this is the only show that i have seen someone african american take the role of main character for some episodes. i feel that this is wrong, the fact that people even think about how many diffent races are on shows makes me angry. everyone is an equal person and when it comes to picking a role for a network drama they should just pick the people that have the best talent. i have always wondered, what if there was a tv that featured a cast of african americans, would there need to be the token white person? This discussion in class stirred up another thing inside for me. i watch my fair share of TV and i have noticed there are never any red haired people. everyone either has brown, blonde, or black hair. never orange. i feel as a person of the red haired community there should be more red haired people on TV. Along with my question before about the token white person i also would like to ask if there should be a token red head.