NFL Tokenism?

TV tokenism has now become very apparent to me after Mr. Bolos' presentation and all of the presentations. Admittedly, I had never thought of how common TV tokenism is, and how the same patterns of characters appear in tons of shows. TV tokenism is the idea that having one or a couple minority characters will offset accusations of a certain network or show being racially biased towards casting white actors over minorities. This pattern is very alarming to me, especially since I had no idea that it was so prevalent. It made me wonder if tokenism was also apparent in other parts of our society.

As it turns out, there are tons of examples of tokenism in our society. The one I was most appalled by was in the National Football League (NFL). The NFL has a rule, the Rooney Rule, which mandates that every team has to interview at least one minority coach for a head coach position. This is very similar to a quota in a way. It is similar in the sense that each team has to interview one minority candidate, but different in the sense that they are not required to hire a minority person for that position.

I know what you're thinking - this is in no way similar to tokenism. Tokenism is, after all, "using" minority characters to avoid backlash. But the Rooney Rule is similar to tokenism because it forces teams to at least try to hire a minority coach. And that is where the controversy comes in.

As with quotas and tokenism, backlash is almost certain. For one, it is easy for some to say that if a minority coach gets hired, it could be that they were hired solely on the basis of race. Though it is almost always incorrect, and obviously offensive, those kinds of comments are pretty common.

But what I was more concerned with was if the rule was effective or not? In this current NFL off-season, there were 15 top coaching vacancies available. How many of those fifteen spots were filled with minority coaches? NONE. So perhaps I was incorrect with my assessment of NFL tokenism - it may be more of the NFL trying to be racially equal (and failing miserably).

Herm Edwards, an ex-NFL coach, hopes that the rule doesn't encourage situations where teams just meet the quota JUST to meet the quota: "It can't be 'who is the guy to interview to get this out of the way?'" But sadly, that is what it looks like it has come to, at least in this off-season.

I don't think that is a coincidence at all - I think that white coaches have the upper hand when it comes to hiring in the NFL. What do you think - is this just another example of tokenism? Is the Rooney Rule sufficient to try to be racially equal, or does it fail miserably?