In her book, Disclosureland, Atinuke Adediran offers a compelling account of how corporate racial disclosures operate not merely as statements of corporate virtue, but as instruments of governance. Through meticulous empirical analysis, she demonstrates, however, that racial progress in corporate America has rarely emerged from corporate benevolence alone, depending instead on federal intervention through contracting mandates, disclosure requirements, and civil rights enforcement. Adediran also acknowledges the political difficulties of attaining increased racial disclosures in the current political environment.

In our forthcoming essay, we build on Adediran’s account through a distinct question: If racial diversity itself is politically contested, can mandatory racial disclosure still survive?

We argue that it can. But its viability does not depend on political consensus around diversity as a social good. Instead, we argue that mandatory corporate racial disclosure may, in fact, be politically and normatively viable not because Americans agree about diversity, but because ideological opponents may converge on the importance of transparency.

Following the racial reckoning of 2020, many large firms considerably expanded their diversity reporting, announced racial equity commitments, and published workforce demographic data. More recently, however, many of these firms rolled back their commitments in a process Adediran terms “race-conscious retraction”—the cycle of robust racial disclosure followed by strategic retractions or softening of racial commitments when legal, political, or reputational pressures shift.

Across corporate America, firms dramatically shifted their disclosures and reporting, replacing explicit references to race with softer language like “belonging,” or removing race references entirely. Firms in the S&P 100—some of the largest and most established in corporate America—markedly reduced their diversity-related human capital disclosures in 2025, removing “DEI” terminology and reducing quantitative diversity metrics from their reporting. Many firms also eliminated diversity initiatives. For example, Goldman Sachs rolled back board diversity criteria and abandoned prior commitments related to board diversity in IPO underwriting. Apple reportedly removed ESG- and diversity-linked metrics from executive compensation packages amidst political backlash. Concurrently, state and federal governments have reframed many DEI practices as potential sources of legal liability, targeting corporate actors they view as out of compliance.

But the story is not just one of simple retraction. Demands for demographic information have not disappeared. Institutional investors continue to seek racial workforce data through shareholder proposals and governance initiatives. Progressive stakeholders seek corporate racial data to hold firms accountable to racial progress. Simultaneously, conservative litigants and regulators increasingly seek the same information to challenge allegedly unlawful race-conscious practices. The result is a political dynamic in which both advocates and critics of corporate DEI increasingly favor access to corporate data. What divides these actors is not whether disclosure should exist, but the reason for the disclosure.

This is where legal scholar Derrick Bell’s interest-convergence framework becomes particularly useful. Bell argued that racial reform primarily occurs not through moral consensus, but when the interests of subordinated groups converge with the interests of dominant actors. In our view, contemporary racial disclosures may represent precisely this kind of convergence. Both advocates and critics of corporate racial justice initiatives have incentives to demand data. Progressives seek corporate data to measure inequality and enforce accountability. Conservative critics seek corporate data to investigate overreach or unlawful favoritism. Both sides, for different reasons, demand transparency.

Importantly, the primary resistance to disclosure may not come from ideological opponents of diversity initiatives. It may come from firms themselves. Adediran’s book demonstrates that corporations often use racial disclosures strategically. Companies issue race-conscious statements when reputational incentives favor them and retreat when political or legal conditions shift. Disclosure can become a form of reputational insulation rather than meaningful transformation. Firms may invoke prior disclosures to resist deeper accountability or use carefully calibrated metrics that preserve managerial discretion over the pace, scope, and depth of racial progress.

But opacity serves firms in another way as well, by preserving narrative control. Without standardized racial data, firms remain free to selectively disclose favorable information while withholding unfavorable realities. They can emphasize aspirational commitments while obscuring promotion bottlenecks, leadership disparities, or inequitable workforce stratification. Mandating disclosure disrupts this flexibility. It subjects corporate claims to measurement and accountability, creating baselines against which investors, employees, regulators, and the public can evaluate progress or retrenchment.

Racial disclosure matters because work is not merely a site of economic exchange. It can also either advance or undermine dignity, identity, and human flourishing. Corporate governance structures shape who gains access to opportunity, advancement, and leadership. They influence whether individuals experience work as inclusion, marginalization, or exclusion. When firms obscure demographic realities, they do more than withhold information. They shape the conditions under which accountability and flourishing become possible.

Disclosure also matters because corporations are not merely economic actors. Increasingly, they also function as civic actors embedded within democratic society. Corporations shape labor markets, influence public policy, fund political campaigns, participate in constitutional litigation, and structure access to opportunity across communities. They enjoy extensive legal privileges—limited liability, perpetual existence, access to public and private capital markets, and constitutional protections and political participation. In exchange for those privileges, transparency represents a minimal civic obligation.

Our argument is therefore not that corporations should be free from more substantive racial justice obligations. To the contrary, democratic governments may legitimately pursue affirmative racial justice goals within corporate governance. But in a polarized political environment marked by deep disagreement over diversity, comprehensive mandates may prove politically unattainable in the near team.

Transparency, by contrast, occupies a different position. It does not require agreement about racial justice as a moral ideal. It requires only agreement that firms exercising significant social and political power should disclose the consequences of that power.

That distinction matters because disclosure does not mandate ideology. Instead, it reveals firm choices. Some firms may pursue racial equity aggressively. Others may remain narrowly focused on shareholder value. Still others may retreat from race-conscious commitments entirely. Mandatory disclosure does not eliminate this pluralism—it makes it visible. Once demographic information becomes public, investors, employees, consumers, and regulators can sort among firms based on their own commitments and preferences. This sorting function is particularly important in the current environment, where critics of DEI often frame diversity initiatives as opaque systems of favoritism insulated from accountability, and progressives often argue that firms make symbolic commitments without measurable change. Both critiques point toward a shared interest in disclosure.

Transparency provides the information necessary for assessment, accountability, and contestation. By reframing racial disclosure as a civic obligation of corporate personhood, grounded in transparency rather than moral consensus, we show how the path to mandatory racial disclosure may lie not in resolving ideological conflict, but in leveraging it through a shared demand for measurable truth.

Emilie K. Aguirre is an associate professor of law, and Veronica Root Martinez is Simpson Thacher & Bartlett Distinguished Professor of Law, at Duke University School of Law. This post is based on their forthcoming essay, “Converging on Disclosure,” available here.