> If you went to a campus and captured 2 such pictures of people at random
Yes. But if a Washington Post photographer went (or chose the pictures), it's vanishingly uncommon. A duckduckgo image search, limited to washingtonpost.com, of "phd graduation", "phd students", "phd graduate", "graduation", or "university students", yields almost no such pictures. Almost all are either very diverse, or entirely black.
They only find whites when it comes to "elites" "dominating".
Yes, it's true that stock photos usually have this "checkbox diversity" where the photo must contain one of each (one white, one black, one man, one woman, etc)
I wouldn't call it propaganda. It's just part of a narrative. Not saying the narrative is wrong, but if you're going to write an article you're trying to convince your readers.
Yes. But if a Washington Post photographer went (or chose the pictures), it's vanishingly uncommon. A duckduckgo image search, limited to washingtonpost.com, of "phd graduation", "phd students", "phd graduate", "graduation", or "university students", yields almost no such pictures. Almost all are either very diverse, or entirely black.
They only find whites when it comes to "elites" "dominating".