Less than a month ago, the GOP appointed a white man as chair of each of their nineteen House of Representatives committees, so handpicking Scott was far from a given for the party. But despite the pride and self-congratulatory back-patting coming from Republican leaders over Scott, his appointment is not the stuff of revolutions; he is a product of the same rickety anti-reality machine that helped Obama win.



A darling of the Tea Party, Scott loathes "big government" and embraces trickle-down economics. He is driven by a dogmatic approach to religion and by his success as a businessman, though his pockets are not nearly as deep as Mitt Romney's. Scott is an old-school GOP culture warrior, speaking out against women's right to choose and against gay and lesbian people's right to marry. On the heels of the Newtown tragedy, Scott's website boasts an uncompromising defense of the Second Amendment. It reads, "As Americans, we have the right to defend ourselves, our families and our property, and the federal government should never interfere with this right. I've cosponsored more than half a dozen bills protecting the rights of gun owners."

Perhaps the most troubling dimension of the GOP's post-election alternate universe is the idea that the racial voting patterns based in centuries of history and real present day policies can be overturned with a handful of high-profile minority appointments. Already Scott's elevation is being cast as tokenism by a large number of skeptics. Such accusations put the GOP on shaky ground -- but they also are sadly damaging to men and women like Scott, who are cast as undeserving beneficiaries of majority group guilt, rather than lauded for their skills, credentials, and perseverance.

That makes it worthwhile to take a closer look at what tokenism is, and what's really behind the polarized voting patterns of racial minorities.

Tokenism can take place when a member of a minority group is vastly outnumbered by people from the majority group, and those people hold power over her position or career. The members of the dominant group treat the minority individual as a representative of the minority group as a whole, and this treatment includes expectations about the individual's behavior. Chief among them: The minority individual must play a role that enhances the mission of the majority, and stay out of trouble.



Scott's policy positions prove him just as tone-deaf to the modern political world as his most conservative GOP colleagues. That makes him one of them at the same time he's a useful foil. What he won't be, however, is someone who helps the GOP win black and Hispanic voters.



The GOP's real problem is that prominent party members have cast blacks and Hispanics as deadbeats and deviants for half a century; it is the racial subtext to Republicans' demonization of dependency that in part fuels the minority aversion to casting ballots for the GOP. Newt Gingrich called Obama the "food-stamp president" during the primary season, and Romney made several efforts to strengthen racially loaded associations during the general election contest, accusing Obama of gutting the work requirements for welfare. Then, Romney's "47 percent" soliloquy was defended, tweaked, and reprised by prominent right-wingers. In the aftermath of the election, Bill O'Reilly eulogized "traditional" (read: "white") America, explaining, "It's not a traditional America anymore. People want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama." Romney himself completed the circle by suggesting after his loss that Obama won because the president gave "gifts" to blacks, Hispanics, and young voters.

Scott, Michael Steele, and Herman Cain can be seen as tokens to be brandished the next time a candidate uses a racist dog whistle during a campaign.

Against this backdrop, it's hard not to see Scott, Michael Steele, Herman Cain, and other prominent black Republicans as a carefully-selected token representatives of a purported handful of "good" black people. These individuals can be brandished, the GOP might hope, in exchange for the benefit of the doubt the next time a candidate uses a racist dog whistle during a campaign, or a hotheaded commentator blames Hispanic undocumented workers for destroying American culture.