Jumping To Conclusions

It used to be that people complained that certain minority faces in a given situation were mere "tokens." That used to be considered something to be ashamed about -- for the person employing the token and the person being used as a token. But apparently that's no longer the case. From the corrections page of the New York Times on Tuesday:

An article on April 30 about dissatisfaction among some black and Hispanic Democrats over the degree of diversity on Senator John Kerry's campaign staff misstated the makeup of the nine aides who travel regularly with him. In addition to an African-American man responsible for keeping Mr. Kerry on schedule, there is a Mexican-American woman who compiles his daily briefing books; the seven other aides are white. (Go to Article)

"There's a black guy who watches the clock, and a Mexican chick who writes reports." I would be embarrassed to read something like this, if I were one of the participants. But I guess our new obsession with "diversity" has overriden our contempt for tokenism -- either that, or we simply have no shame in our society anymore.