How to Use tokenism in a Sentence

tokenism

noun
  • Did the company choose her for her merits, or merely as an act of tokenism?
  • There was some carping by those who felt the statement didn’t go far enough, or was typical tokenism.
    — Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 8 Jan. 2018
  • Some may say, rightly so, that embracing this unicorn status is a form of tokenism.
    — Deeptee Jain, Forbes, 1 Jan. 2022
  • After the murder of George Floyd, it could be argued that tokenism has been on the rise.
    — Janice Gassam Asare, Forbes, 1 May 2022
  • Morris, the only Black member of the cast, wonders aloud about his tokenism.
    — Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 9 Oct. 2024
  • Critics say quotas can lead to tokenism, rather than deeper cultural change.
    — Fortune, 12 July 2019
  • The offer smacked of cliché, another act of holiday tokenism.
    — Grayson Haver Currin, New York Times, 15 Aug. 2022
  • This persistent myth that qualified women are scarce leads to practices like tokenism.
    — Nadia Edwards-Dashti, Forbes, 20 Dec. 2024
  • But the show is clever in its sendup of those homogenous environments and never feels like an outsider’s guide to tokenism.
    — Bethonie Butler, Washington Post, 12 Sep. 2023
  • There’s a certain kind of racist tokenism that is an underlying connotation with that.
    — Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 13 Aug. 2021
  • This creates a culture of tokenism, a system that treats students of color like pawns in a game of virtuous facades.
    — WSJ, 8 Nov. 2022
  • But talking to the producers quickly dispelled his fears of tokenism in a splashy period reboot.
    — Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times, 15 June 2023
  • Ely, who is now a business professor at Harvard, had hit upon a dynamic known as tokenism.
    — Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, 2 Aug. 2017
  • Such appointment of family members reeked of tokenism, experts say.
    — Ananya Bhattacharya, Quartz, 19 July 2021
  • Its own structural weakness is the contrived tokenism with which viewers are presumably meant to identify.
    — Chicago Reader, 19 July 2017
  • For me, avoiding tokenism … has been looking for roles where the character doesn’t only exist as a means to tell somebody else’s story.
    — Time Staff, Time, 28 May 2021
  • The name of the podcast is intentionally meant to dismiss the tokenism that is sometimes assigned to women.
    — Emily Iannaconi, Forbes, 12 Nov. 2021
  • Every day still there’s still resistance for curvy women in the industry, and there is tokenism for curvy women in the industry.
    — Janelle Okwodu, Vogue, 11 Oct. 2018
  • Others say that in some instances the fashion companies' push for diversity is reduced to tokenism.
    — Mona Kosar Abdi, ABC News, 27 Apr. 2023
  • Even away from the shadows of the street corners and dark alleyways, the pervasive nature of tokenism in media creates the same tension.
    — Ashlee Marie Preston, Harper's BAZAAR, 6 July 2021
  • Listen to a reality show star have a frank conversation about tokenism or romance yourself with a bit of poetry.
    — Keyaira Boone, Essence, 4 Jan. 2022
  • But the assistant isn’t interested in the tokenism of becoming the first Black coach in a championship game.
    — Stephen Humphries, The Christian Science Monitor, 10 Dec. 2021
  • Still, diversity for diversity's sake—if not executed in a way that feels genuine and cogent—can come off as tokenism.
    — Leah Bourne, Glamour, 10 Apr. 2018
  • Tokenism can play out on a larger scale as well, giving the impression that the industry is transforming, when in reality, the changes are small.
    — Valeriya Safronova, New York Times, 16 Mar. 2017
  • Some members told me that there also seems to be a sense of tokenism in the industry—the idea that only a few instructors of color can attain fame in the white world of fitness.
    — SELF, 1 Sep. 2020
  • This has to be meaningful contribution and participation – tokenism will only come to bite us in the future.
    — Dr. Patrick Noack, CNN, 2 Feb. 2023
  • In an incredible act of gaslighting, the Hall leadership tried to pass off this tokenism as diversity, and many media outlets fell for it.
    — Evelyn McDonnell, Billboard, 15 Nov. 2019
  • Does the barrier shatter and permit tokenism to be exchanged for a lasting Hollywood currency and legacy?
    — Richard Newby, The Hollywood Reporter, 23 July 2022
  • Whether or not the company can evolve remains to be seen, and critics have already labeled Sampaio’s casting a case of tokenism, an attempt to win goodwill in the court of public opinion.
    — Janelle Okwodu, Vogue, 8 Aug. 2019
  • But looking elsewhere for the Palme sent a message, too, defusing any possible charges of tokenism and alerting the outside world that this jury would ultimately hew to its own path.
    — Justin Chang, latimes.com, 21 May 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tokenism.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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