Converging on Disclosure

 In Disclosureland, Atinuke Adediran offers a powerful and timely account of corporate racial disclosures in American society. Sometimes corporate racial disclosures may be characterized in a manner to make the corporation look virtuous. But she persuasively and methodically demonstrates that racial progress in corporate America has historically depended on federal intervention, including disclosure mandates, contracting requirements, and civil rights enforcement. Disclosureland argues that voluntary corporate commitments, absent regulatory backbone, have proven to be extremely fragile and lack the durability necessary for meaningful long-term change. The recounting of this history allows Disclosureland to make an invaluable contribution to corporate law, organizational equity, and workplace diversity literatures by revealing disclosure as a structural mechanism through which the federal government has shaped issues related to race within corporate firms. One assumption in the book is that meaningful federal disclosure reform depends upon political consensus around increased racial equity within corporate firms as a shared social good. In today’s polarized environment that consensus appears, at best, elusive and, at worst, impossible.

This Essay argues that disclosure may be politically and normatively viable—not because Americans agree about the importance of racial equity within corporate firms—but because ideological opponents may converge on the importance of transparency itself. Drawing on Derrick Bell’s interest-convergence thesis and contemporary elaborations, this Essay contends that both advocates and critics of corporate racial justice initiatives have incentives to demand data related to the status of racial equity within corporate firms. Progressives require information to measure stagnation of racial equity efforts and enforce accountability of firms’ stated goals. Conservative critics also benefit from demographic transparency to articulate claims of unlawful diversity efforts or favoritism of certain demographic groups. This Essay extends Disclosureland’s insights and identifies a politically feasible route toward federal disclosure mandates.