What is a strategy to avoid tokenism in ethnic representation?

• A. Avoiding the group entirely.
• B. Providing diverse, central roles and narrative arcs that explore cultural context.
• C. Incorporating ethnicity as token background with no depth.
• D. Using a single stereotypical character to represent the group.

Answer: (B)

Avoiding tokenism means portraying characters from an ethnic group with depth, agency, and relevance to the story, rather than treating their ethnicity as a decorative trait. Providing diverse, central roles and narrative arcs that explore cultural context does exactly that. It places characters from the group at the heart of the plot, gives them meaningful goals and challenges, and uses their cultural background to enrich the story rather than flatten it to a single trait. This approach shows a range within the group and avoids stereotypes, helping audiences understand the culture through lived experiences rather than through a surface-level label. In contrast, leaving the group out, treating ethnicity as background with no depth, or relying on a single stereotypical character would all reproduce tokenism by reducing the group to a check on the box rather than a living, varied presence in the drama.