The political speech rights of the tokenized

Abstract

ABSTRACT It is important for members of marginalized groups to express political views relevant to how members of their respective groups should be treated. Recently, however, it has been argued that there are some contexts––that is, contexts in which members of marginalized groups are tokenized and have considerable power to influence political outcomes that would affect their other group members––in which certain marginalized group members ought not express certain political views relevant to how members of their respective groups should be treated. In this essay, I examine two arguments defending this conclusion (the proportional representation and unjust enrichment arguments) and conclude that both fail. Then, I argue that recognizing that members of marginalized groups are permitted to speak their minds, even in these contexts, favorably affirms their broad political speech rights.