Martin Luther King Day has put the focus on the few blacks in high ad/PR posts. Mike Paul has been saying as much for years but now has a new tune after joining Publicis in a PR post.

He is in favor of diversity and inclusion for all groups that might suffer from discrimination.

But blacks, or “people of color” as Paul says, have a different problem from those in other groups since their skin color does not immediately identify them. Special attention should be given to blacks.

Companies and institutions are satisfying their quotas for diversity in many ways besides hiring blacks including hiring Hispanics, handicapped, seniors, members of the LGBT community, and in some cases, women. Blacks are lost in the shuffle.

Paul, protesting the lack of blacks in high ad/PR posts as well as the scarcity of blacks at Seminar, the annual gathering of 200+ blue chip corporate and agency executives, boycotted last year’s meeting. However, we notice he didn’t quit this august group, which was known as “PR Seminar” until 2007. “PR” is just about banned as a title by the group’s members who prefer “corporate communications.”

PRSA's McCaskill Has Mission

Andrew McCaskill, SVP of global communications of Nielsen, https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewmccaskill as the only black on the 17-member board of PR Society of America, has a special duty to see that the Society lives up to the high ideals of Martin Luther King as well as the high ideals of Nielsen and PRSA. He represents the Tri-State district of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The Society's treatment of the dozen authors who found that it was selling copies of their works without their permission from 1978 to 1994 does not pass the test of fairness. There can be no disputing that the copying took place and netted the Society about $60,000 a year by the early 1990s.

Instead of settling or negotiating with the authors, the Society at first claimed "fair use" and then the right of a "library" to charge for borrowed works. When both of those arguments failed, the Society said it would only respond to a lawsuit. None of the publishers of the authors would support them and the authors gave up. But the injustice remains. Other reforms are needed at the Society including opening member contacts to the press, which was the practice until 2006.

The assistance of McCaskill and the other national board members is needed to accomplish this.

Paul Faults Employers

Paul contends there are plenty of qualified blacks who would take top ad/PR posts if only companies and agencies would hire them.

We think not. A readership poll on this website supports that view. Asked to vote whether the ad/PR industry discriminates against blacks or whether talented blacks seek other occupations, the vote after four days was 92% for the latter.

People of all races, nationalities and creeds want to excel at whatever occupation they choose.

Numerous corporate and political pressures affect the way PR people do their jobs. They often report not only to the CEO but to legal, marketing, and financial. It’s like carrying a heavy burden while walking on thin ice. Keeping silent and shielding others from press questions are often what is required.

PR jobs rank near the top in producing stress, says CareerCast.com, whose rankings are picked up by HuffPost and many other media.

In 2011 it rated “PR officer” as the second most stressful job, moving it up six places from No. 8. “PR executive” was No. 5 on its 2013 list of the ten most stressful jobs.

PR executives are required to do “damage control” which means they have to “think and act quickly under stress,” says CareerCast. “They live in the public eye.” They are also “on call” 24/7 because “news never stops” and they must deal with “potentially hostile” reporters. The occupation is very attractive to recent college grads which makes “getting and keeping a good job that much more difficult,” it adds.

PR Unwelcome in Own House

Talented people of all stripes note that PR people are unwelcome in what should not only be a major employer of them, but set an example of the highest ideals of PR—PR Society of America. There were many PR people on the staff in the 1960s and 1970s when ex-journalist Rea Smith presided. A press-friendly culture was present that included inviting reporters to be Silver Anvil judges. That culture ended in 1980 when Patrick Jackson became president.

He and the board installed association executive Betsy Kovacs as staff head from 1982-1994. Only one PR person was on staff—Donna Peltier. Ad careerist Ray Gaulke succeeded her, lasting until 1999. PR professional Catherine Bolton then served five years after Gaulke's sudden resignation, instituting such press-friendly policies as distributing membership directories to reporters. But she was replaced in 2006 by Bill Murray, a former executive with the Motion Picture Assn., who was given the title of CEO in 2013. He announced his resignation in 2014, nine months before the end of his contract. He was succeeded in 2015 by Joseph Truncale, whose career was in printing/mailing.

Publicis executive Mark McClennan, who has just served a year as elected chair of the Society, has not been allowed to answer an email or phone call from us. We don’t think any self-respecting black would submit to such blockage in press relations given the Society's commitment to the "free flow of information."

The Society has just relocated to another office downtown without subjecting that decision to the Assembly or the entire membership. That is a sneaky move that does not befit a national organization with 22,000 members.

Bates Sees Discrimination in Clients

Don Bates, an instructor at New York University who worked in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and who has served in corporate, non-profit and PR firms for nearly 50 years, says a cultural divide militates against blacks in ad/PR posts.

“Agencies don’t hire ‘people of color’ because they and their clients, especially for-profits, are bastions of whiteness,” he says. Except incidentally and only occasionally, agency owners and their clients aren’t connected culturally, socially and philosophically with non-whites.

“One distasteful outcome is that most PR agencies are afraid their clients won’t accept 'people of color’ so they don’t hire them or, if they do, they don’t put them in their most visible positions externally. Racism, institutional and inadvertent, perceived and real, drives the hiring and promotion dynamic. Yes, the situation in PR is changing for the better, but the pace of change is glacial with rare exception. Advertising, marketing, human resources and other professions are way ahead of PR on the diversity front. Their gain is PR’s loss. I find it more than a little paradoxical that PR preaches diversity as one of the cardinal rules of business success, but does such a poor job of living by its own words.”