Tokenism and Diversity

TV tokenism, as we've been discussing in our American Studies course, is an issue that plagues the most popular modern media. The way I see it, the issue stems from the noble-hearted, but ill thought-out diversity initiative pushed forward by the networks, cable, and all the other little special snowflake channels. The problem I have with it is that it makes these TV programs (Along with many other aspects of life in our western society) embrace diversity for the sake of diversity. This is the wrong foundation to go about diversity with. A cast shouldn't be diverse merely to fit a quota. It should be diverse because of the diverse amount of people available. Falling into the logic of numbers is essentially saying that X amount is just the right amount of non-white people to have on the screen in any given show, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of the diversity initiative in the first place. As a concept, TV diversity is certainly a good thing, but it's certainly been implemented in the botchiest of piss-poor ways.