Black. Lives. Matter. Period.
As public relations leaders and educators, we need to acknowledge our professional complicity in both overt and systemic racism.
Let’s remember that the despicable KKK was able to expand its membership and the reach of its racist mission because of the hired work of an early publicity firm. Let’s recall that Ivy Ledbetter Lee was called to testify before Congress about his work advising Nazi-affiliated companies. And let’s acknowledge that we help perpetuate systemically racist practices when we fail to live up to the best promise of public relations as being about BOTH words AND actions.
Words. The First Amendment protects free speech. But not all free speech deserves professional amplification by public relations practitioners in the marketplace of ideas. Indeed, Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance noted specifically that “We should . . . claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.” For a deeper dive on this, I share some thoughts on political tolerance versus tolerant politics that I wrote a few years ago. For now, I ask us to engage in critical self-reflection, not just personally, but professionally: Whose voices do we amplify and which voices do we silence by our personal decisions and professional choices?
Actions. Beyond words, public relations leaders have the responsibility to guide organizations toward corrective actions. And by “corrective action,” I don’t mean offering another healing dialogue, creating another employee resource group, or bringing in another diversity trainer. Those actions are great ways to start reflecting, but they don’t do any systemic correcting.
Actual corrective action is uncomfortable, hard work that will take years of sustained commitment. Yet, this is where our best opportunities lie to fix systemic racism, by helping to correct organizational practices, procedures, and policies that are inherently biased to yield results that perpetuate the privilege of those who already have it (including corporations).
Actual corrective action means going beyond diversity statements (which are only “words”; see above) to look at our organizational actions and their results. These may include hiring practices and retention efforts; salary and reward structures; compensation gaps between the highest- and lowest-paid employees; supplier and vendor sourcing methods; support or suppression of collective bargaining efforts; organizational lines of reporting and accountability; leadership profiles and board compositions; fiscal support for employees’ charitable giving and community volunteerism; etc.
Innumerable organizations in recent weeks have finally been moved to say that Black lives matter; I challenge each of us to make our organizations live up to the second Page Principle, to “prove it with action.” Not all protests happen on the streets, and not everyone can protest publicly. I believe that public relations leaders can be effective social change agents, each within our own spheres of influence, at home, at work, and in the community.
This means for each of us to support our African American colleagues in ways that they (not we) desire, to match our individual actions to our words with regard to social justice, and to hold our public relations practice to its professional promise of guiding corrective organizational action.
We MUST “prove it with action,” so that we can move our society closer toward the promise of America, “the land that never has been yet—and yet must be—the land where every man is free” (Langston Hughes, 1936).
