Some Race Stuff in Angel, pt. I

Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about race theory beyond what I've picked up from Blogs that I read. I have studied feminism a bit, and extrapolated a little from there. But I am a rank amatuer. As such, if I misuse definitions and such, be gentle.
The internet doesn't seem to be in exact agreement about the exact definition of "tokenism". What they can agree on, though, seems to be a minority included in the cast solely so there will be a minority cast member, and not given an interesting characterization of their own. After that they start to disagree. Wikipedia says token characters are usually bland and inoffensive to avoid accusations of stereotyping, and they don't really contribute anything to the plot. TV tropes says sometimes they are stereotypes completely and sometimes they act just like white people (as if all white people acted the same way.) I think all of these are faces of tokenism.
I've just started watching Angel for the first time, and I'm still at the beginning of season two. Still, using what I've seen so far of Gunn, I'm uncertain whether the label of "token" can be accurately applied to him. Yes, he is the only black guy in the main cast. Is that his only function? Not really. His main function in the group, however, seems to be fighting and doing things that are illegal - chalk one up for stereotypes. Parents are dead, grew up on the street, criminal record, - seems pretty sterotypical. But his street background is an important plot point. He runs a gang of lower-class kids, not all of them black,who fight vampires.
Now here's where it gets interesting. Several times on Buffy and Angel, regular, unaugmented humans have tried to fight demons and vampires on their own*. They almost always fail spectacularly, or barely succeed, but either way these attempts are usually played for laughs. Gunn's gang isn't played for laughs. Because they're poor and the others have been rich kids? Because the leaders are black, and to American TV audiences black = badass?
That's a more troubling possibility. There are basically two categories that people fall into: Slayers, watchers, vampires, witches - people who, by virtue of some supernatural power, can handle the forces of evil; and the Xanders and Cordelias of the world, who just got caught up in this stuff and can't handle it. And Gunn, by virtue of being black, and poor, fits into the first category. Wesley and Cordelia, despite Cordy's visions and Wesley's watcher training, still fall into the second. Because they're 1. white and 2. upper class. In other words, the black guy is classified with the demons, not the humans.
This may change as the season progresses. I'll post more about it as I watch through.
I'm gonna go ahead and post this now as part one. In part two, I'm gonna dig into the episode "First Impressions" and all of the interesting stuff it sort of almost does with race, and why it doesn't actually do any of it.


*I'm not counting the Initiative here, although they did ultimately fail pretty spectacularly. To me they qualify as augmented.

Obligatory introductory post

I've started a lot of blogs over the years. Most Die very quickly. This one I hope will survive. It's for musings. Mostly about literature and TV. Probably not TV that's currently on the air. Once there is real content I'm proud of, I'll circulate it. Real posts coming soon.
Just a warning - I am a very privileged, straight, white male, and I'm going to write about racism and sexism from time to time. Try not to hold it against me? I'm trying here.
One of the things I will probably do here is explorer thesises I would write about if I were planning to go into academia, only without the same kind of rigorous scholarship they would make me use. I will try to keep inane details of my life off of this blog.