Racial Monopoly

Hello again! How've you been? It's been a while, hasn't it?
Things have been going well with m- no? You don't care? You just want another blog post? Okay. I guess I can make that happen...

This is a "bonus" post, if you will. Truthfully, this assignment mandated only 10 blog posts. One intro, eight "legitimate" blogs and a conclusion. This is the extra fluff in the middle.
Why am I doing this? Well, extra points, for one. And two? I've got a surprising amount of half-finished blog posts sitting around and they're getting restless. I fear they may revolt.

So put your seat-belt on and keep all hands and feet inside of the proverbially moving vehicle at all times.

Every once in a while in a work of fiction, we come across a "Token ______" character. No, these are not guest appearances by the author of The Lord of the Rings. It's more along the lines of "Token Hippie", or "Token Feminist", "Token Effeminate Gay Male Friend", etc. Many times, this can also be a "Token [racial minority]", or in sci-fi, "Token Humans". The _____ in "Token ______" is meant to represent a minority. This can be either racial or non-racial. These characters tend to be included just for the sake of being included.
While these characters may be fun in their own right, many times they're used as a sort of "Get out of jail free" card to saying the creators are diverse in their casting or their character conceptions, and that "everyone's equal, y'all!" Despite this honourable sentiment, it must be said that if that was truly the case, we'd have a (relatively) equal amount of [insert token type] characters as [standard] characters or an equal repartition in character importance. Many times, Token Characters rarely contribute to the plot. They sit and look pretty, but they rarely make any plot-altering decisions, or interact on a more meaningful level with anyone.
Does that mean that every story you write/create has to include a Power Ranger-type group? Well, no. It's simply more important to flesh out all of your characters, and not to include a minority simply for the sake of having one.
Don't waste your words, or your characters. We all deserve better than that.


Unless it's a satire.