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I tried to post it under the product's listing, but I couldn't get it to work, so I figured "Paizo Products" is the next best place.
Under the new Backgrounds, the first one is "Ex-Con Token Guard". Under the description, it just shortens that even further by saying they get a +1 bonus to interact with "Token Guards" and convicted criminals such as prison inmates.
I find this to be highly racist, and unnecessarily so. While the dictionary says a token is: a member of a group (such as a minority) that is included within a larger group through tokenism, especially : a token employee.
You don't need to make the character a "token" (a phrase which has a ton of racial meaning in America), just say "Reformed criminal". That could be a member of any race, and not someone seen as a token by his fellow officers. It may even be someone that the other officers look up to, proving that the system they work to uphold actually works for reforming criminal and putting them on a better path.
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Token Guards are just the colloquial name for guards in the Coins district. The name has nothing to do with race or tokenism.
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Token Guard is the name of the Coins district precinct where the PC worked before tranferring the Edgewatch, just like the Graycloaks of the Ascendant Court or the Muckruckers of Puddles or any of the other Campaign backgrounds. I don't think it has anything to do with them being ex-cons (as I don't believe the whole district is made up of ex-cons), but where the name came from I don't know. Pathfinder Wiki sources the reference to Guide to Absalom from 2008, a book I don't own.
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Token Guard is the name of the Coins district precinct where the PC worked before tranferring the Edgewatch, just like the Graycloaks of the Ascendant Court or the Muckruckers of Puddles or any of the other Campaign backgrounds. I don't think it has anything to do with them being ex-cons (as I don't believe the whole district is made up of ex-cons), but where the name came from I don't know. Pathfinder Wiki sources the reference to Guide to Absalom from 2008, a book I don't own.
I don't own it either, but with the way the Edgewatch Player's Guide went WAY out of it's way to soothe customers/player's feelings about playing cops, I'm surprised they just carried over an older term like that without apparent consideration, and backed it up with background abilities to match. "Hey, Token Officer Washington Gonzalez-Chang, you go talk to these criminal suspects, they are "your people", so you get a +1 Circumstance bonus to interact with them."
No one at Paizo thought that calling an ex-con officer a Token, giving them Trained in Thievery and Pickpocket, and better at "talking to their own people", would raise any eyebrows in this day and age, with the constant looting and rioting going on in big cities in the US? It's true that there are officers from such an ex-con background in America, and they are very valuable to the force, but calling them Tokens is derisive, even if it was their former name.
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A token is a thing which is exchanged for goods and services, you know the type of thing that The Coins district is literally all about and the culture of the guard there is very much a tit-for-tat affair, if you're not paying them they won't really be apt to give a damn.
The whole tokenism meaning that you're talking is pretty much the polar opposite of what it is at least trying to convey, doing something for appearances or as some symbolic measure is about as far away from the culture of what's really going on which is: "You want something? Pay me, then we'll talk."
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If you need to bribe an officer to do their job, that's called a "dirty cop". They are common in 3rd world countries. But that isn't what the background suggests. If it provided an extra 15gp at the character start, that you got as bribes just to do your job, then that explanation could make more sense, but that's not what we got.
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Ex-con officers are not called Token Guards. There is a district in Absalom where the police are called the Token Guard; they are not all ex-cons. Saying you get a +1 to interact with Token Guards just means you get a +1 to interact with members of your former precinct, just like every other background in the Player's Guide gives a +1 to interact with members of their former precinct.
The background specifically says that the guards in the Coins District are dirty cops ("You joined the Coins District Guard, but soon learned that this precinct was a haven for the very corruption you sought to undo"), as does the Guide to Absalom via the link I already included.
The guard only responds to offenses when paid to do so by a private concern or to avoid the attention of the primarch. The Token Guard's most typical response to a disturbance is to arrest everyone at the scene and hold them for disturbing the peace at Bail House, the headquarters of the guard, until someone posts bail.
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If you need to bribe an officer to do their job, that's called a "dirty cop". They are common in 3rd world countries. But that isn't what the background suggests. If it provided an extra 15gp at the character start, that you got as bribes just to do your job, then that explanation could make more sense, but that's not what we got.
The USA is not a third world country, despite appearances.
They're called the Token Guard because they work where people exchange the funny little tokens called "money". You're literally just trying to start up s#+% over nothing since you are now willfully misreading things just to try and look mad.
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If you don't like the term, it's easy enough to change to something like "the Penny Guard" or "the Copper Guard."
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If you don't like the term, it's easy enough to change to something like "the Penny Guard" or "the Copper Guard."
Gives more reason to refer to guards as coppers, at least.