Girls, Tokenism, and Identity Politics

I have a confession to make.  While I’ve never seen an episode of Girls, I have read almost every review of the series.  One of the more progressive critics of the series complained about the lack of diversity within the group of girls.  Dunham, in response to this criticism, said that she wanted to avoid tokenism.  Herein lies the fundamental inconsistency in the progressive group representation cause.  Having no minorities represented is not okay, but if you do, you get criticized for tokenism.  How can this small group of four girls adequately represent every possible demographic?

The answer, quite obviously, is that it can’t.  And it shouldn’t have to try.  But this issue is larger than television.   This trend has overrun politics and academia.  At my university, for instance, much ink has been spilt about whether our faculty and administration is diverse enough.  Frankly, I don’t think one of the relevant factors to choosing a dean should be race.  And this leads to another inconsistency.  Tokenism implies that the minority representative speaks on behalf of the minority as a whole.  For this reason, I find affirmative action in college admissions less objectionable.  I still feel that non-demographic qualifications should dictate admissions, but the problems are less severe when thousands are being admitted, rather than a single dean hired.  The larger pool diminishes tokenism and allows for many different minorities to be represented. When this affirmative action pervades academic hiring, however, the same issues reappear.  In short, the smaller the scale, the less affirmative action should affect the decision.

There is an even more fundamental underlying tension here however: that of the many and the one.  It is impossible for “the one” to perfectly represent “the many.”  Certainly, having a minority perspective can help make a group more representative of the population, but it can never be perfectly representative.  We see this every time we vote.  Each citizen brings different interests to the table, but they must all vote for one representative.  This is what makes minority causes so confusing.  Since there are so many different irreducible perspectives, one person’s feminism is not another’s.  In this environment almost everything can be considered sexist or racist.  What Lena Dunham promotes in Girls may differ from what other feminists envision.  So how can we all get on the same page?  Unfortunately, we can’t.  Welcome to the world of identity politics.