This week’s reading on the “American racial reckoning” had me thinking a lot about the conversation about social media that we have been having over the course of the semester and especially over the last few weeks. In large part, it was social media that and reposting and infographic economy that fueled massive changes in American corporate culture and in the market more largely. For maybe the first time, I saw in action the economics of PR and the monetary payoff of maintaining an image of corporate social responsibility. It was apparent even on our campus – I am a SPIA major, not a Woody Woo major as I would have been if I entered Princeton a year earlier. I lived in First College, formerly known as Wilson College. Years before, student staged a sit in of Nassau Hall to ask for the same and were ignored. The social media storm changed everything. It could be argued these are performative changes, but it does mean something to the people that live in these buildings and work for degrees under these names. That said, affirmative action was also repealed this year. Arguably, this campus saw more conversation about the names of buildings than a monumental Supreme Court decision that changes the fabric college campuses forever.
I say all this because when I see the DEI phenomenon similarly. It is not meaningless in my eyes. Just the validity assigned to issues that fall under that category is worth something. There is very real pressure in corporations to make hiring decisions that reflect equity of opportunity and representation in a way that there was never before. But at the same time, is it like adding a little bandaid over a gaping problem without the proper infrastructure to handle it? As they write in the Niemen Lab article: “Griffin said OPB learned the hard way that reporters will feel as if they’re failing if OPB doesn’t build the editing infrastructure alongside them. That’s why OPB decided to put reporters covering public health, policing, and legal affairs under a social justice editor, to ensure those beats are being edited with an eye toward how those issues intersect.”
This idea of follow-up of DEI practices with actual infrastructure s something that I’ve felt personally felt deeply at Princeton. It is one thing to be invited and another to be included and practically involved and it is imperative to not only recognize this difference but act on it across social, news and other institutions.
Moving to the Bass works, the discussion about international law further underscored the rather disheartening themes that we’ve been reiterating this semester. International accountability struggles to become anything beyond a triumph of the victor, even when the victor is on the side of justice. Douglas MacArthur was “the effective dictator of Japan” as the New York Times said. Until the international arena finds a way to achieve diplomacy beyond muscle flexing, the space for justice or even basic human decency is bleak.
