Racial Goals & Private Companies: What’s Legal & What’s Not
Atinuke Adediran, Racial Targets, 118 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1455 (2024).
In the wake of the extrajudicial murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, millions protested across the U.S. and worldwide against the racial and social injustices that persist within society. The 2020 “racial reckoning” protests were the largest racial justice demonstrations in the U.S. since the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and witnessed a broad spectrum of society coming together to demand redress for pervasive inequities across race, gender, and socioeconomic lines. Even companies, that had traditionally preferred to stand on the sidelines with respect to racial justice issues, stepped into the fray, publicly declaring their support for racial justice and promising to do their part to combat racial inequities. As part of these efforts, hundreds of companies since 2020 have voluntarily pledged to increase people of color within their ranks, specifying numerical targets and timelines for achieving these goals.
In her new paper, Racial Targets, published in Northwestern Law Review, Professor Atinuke Adediran tackles the thorny question: are corporate racial targets legally permissible? Adediran joins in conversation with several scholars who have been considering how the 2020 “racial reckoning” has impacted corporate behavior. To do so, she examines voluntary racial goals (i.e., racial targets) that companies have publicly established for themselves in response to shareholder, investor, and employee pressures to support racial equity. Adediran argues that racial targets are meaningfully distinct from racial quotas and, as such, despite the constitutional illegality of the latter, the former are within the boundaries of the law. Continue reading "Racial Goals & Private Companies: What’s Legal & What’s Not"
