Alicia Gaspar de Alba's critique of the CARA exhibition reveals an unfavorable aspect of feminism or any form of social justice, where if one is asking for representation, then any representation is good representation. Too often in society one sees the repetition of "tokenism" to seem inclusive. Gaspar de Alba addresses this phenomenon with Chicana artists represented in art exhibits, however the ratio of Chicano to Chicana are extremely disproportionate and reveals much about contemporary U.S. society.
The huge discrepancy between Chicano and Chicana artists exhibited allow one to see how by having a small representation of an underrepresented group, somehow, one is meeting requirements of inclusion. One can see this even at UCLA, where marketing deliberately chooses a token Black, a token Latinx, and even a token Asian to display on marketing material (it is also interesting how there is never Indigenous folk representation within these marketing materials).
Gaspar de Alba addresses an important issue of tokenism and forces us to reflect in ways that we have seen this tokenism throughout our lives. Once one recognizes the tokens, whether they are tokens themselves or they see how prominently they are used throughout society, once can grasp better ideas of inclusion and assist society in moving forwards towards actual inclusion and away from tokenism.
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