Business owners often want to show that they prioritize workplace diversity and inclusion. However, for decades, many stock photos focused on white people, even when they depicted cartoon-like graphics and not real-life humans.
Jennifer Dublino, Are Stock Photos Still Worth Using in 2025?
What a stupid statement!
In other words, the author said, "Stock photos on your company website can show whether you are a racist business owner." How can stock photos represent racism? Why do you judge a business based on its stock photos?
Let us say there is a company that uses stock photos on its website. All stock photos have white people only. Does that prove the company is racist? No, it does not. It does not prove anything. You can not measure how racist a company is based on stock photos. Nobody thinks like that. I never think like that.
Companies do not show workplace diversity and inclusion through stock photos. Even if they show different people in the stock photos, that does not prove that the business owners care about inclusion or diversity. It proves absolutely nothing. Those photos do not represent anything about the companies. They are decorative images only.
According to the law in the United States, business owners can not be racist. They can not have a business if they are racists. They can not treat their customers based on their race. They can not have racist reasons to hire somebody. They can not say, "You are black, and we can not have you here." They will go to jail, and their business will go bankrupt.
If business owners want to show inclusion and diversity, they will put a collection of photos of their employees. Those photos can show white and black people working together, for example. They will not use stock photos anyway.
But photos are not enough to prove how inclusive a workplace is. Stock photos are nothing.
I do not like that article.