The use of the term "token" suggest that they were pointless characters, where your examples are vital figures in each series, with the sole issue being that they are black. Robbie Robertson was in Spider-Man very early on and was the friendlier mentor to Peter Parker at the Bugle. This helped give a reason why Parker stays at the paper, despite JJJ's abuse. Fox was introduced to show who ran Bruce Wayne's businesses while he is off fighting crime, since they would probably fall apart if he was running things (with that much distraction). Race was deliberately chosen, to be sure, but they were hardly throwaway characters, which "token" would suggest (like Franklin in Peanuts).
Thses kinds of discussions always amuse me as they present the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario faced in mass entertainment. If you do not present a racially integrated world, you are criticized for presenting a "whites only" world; yet, if you then present minority characters, they are immediately described as tokens. You can't win. Sure, if you have multiple characters of different ethnicities, religions, genders, sexual orientations, etc..., you have less that can be targeted as tokenism, assuming that all are presented as wholly formed characters and not stereotypes. If you are a heterosexual, white male writer, protestant, etc, etc, you are going to have a hard time presenting an authentic minority experience. The best you can do is present the characters as real people, with real emotions and motivations and try to do some research into the minority experience; but, at the end of the day, it will still only be your interpretation of that experience. By the same token, I don't expect Dwayne McDuffie to be able to authentically write about growing up as a white male in a small Illinois farm town, with only a couple of racial minorities in the entire student population. The best you can hope for is that the writer will talk over their stories and characters with friends or colleagues of a minority group to get a different perspective and incorporate that into their story.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"
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