Tag / diversity

by drnatalietjtindall

A Response to the Washington Post article, “It’s 2015. Where are all the Black college fy aculty?”

Here is the article if you haven’t read it.

Black faculty are here. We’re not mythical unicorns.  Some are the walking wounded. Some are the successful few who have navigated the university politics to make it to full. Some black faces appear in the slick university brochures. Others toil behind the scenes, not quite sure if they are noticed and hoping that they aren’t.

But we are here. You might not see us for the following reasons:

We’re probably in diversity meetings called by the dean or provost that will lead to nothing but lost time and increased aggravation.

We’re probably frustrated and marginalized. We’re probably not on tenure track.

We might be in a hiring committee meeting, only to see certain candidates declared as “not a good fit for the department.” We might be asked to recruit people of color to apply for these faculty lines to “get our diversity numbers up.”

We could be seeking out other professors of color on campus, just to see a friendly face or another brown or black face on campus. And many of us fail at that task.

We’re probably working with the students of color who were left behind in the graduate program because they considered deficient by faculty. We’re sponsoring and mentoring those who were left to wither on the vine.

We might be mentoring an endless stream of students who seek you out because you are a safe haven. We keep tissue, petty cash, candy, and a good word tucked away at all times just in case one of those students need it.

We may be grinding out the service work that counts for nothing but takes up so much time. We didn’t volunteer for this committee, but somehow we’re on it. We might be told by a department chair that since we’re good at that administrative stuff that we are a good fit for time-intensive, labor-filled service that will amount to one line of the CV and no goodwill from those making merit, tenure, and promotion decisions.

We probably aren’t focused on research as much as we like because of that other stuff. If we are research focused and we happen to do work on our community, we’re probably being told that it isn’t enough for tenure.

We’re likely dealing with classroom issues that have to deal with being black, being black and female, or being black and queer or disabled in the classroom.

We might be dealing with the structural racism, sexism, and other -isms that prop up the academy and dealing with the physical and mental toll that wears your body down.

We’re here, but we are occupied.

by drnatalietjtindall

Diversity in Public Relations: It’s 2015, and we’re still talking about this?

A draft of this blog post sat in my box for months. I didn’t want to write this, but conversations at the PRSA International Conference made me feel like it was necessary to write this post.

I feel like I have talked about diversity in public relations for eons. That’s not true. It’s only been since I started graduate school at the University of Maryland that I began noticing and talking about the lack of diversity in the industry. That was 10+ years ago. Yet here we are in 2015 (almost 2016) still talking about this issue.

Example 1: This PRWeek cover of mostly white practitioners who are the top leaders of PR agencies frustrated me and others. As Shonali Burke points out:

A strong example of this can be seen on PRWeek’s 2014 Agency Business Report. While the publication’s effort to celebrate PR leadership and their innovation year after year is notable, it’s hard to ignore the lack of diversity on the front cover, which featured the most senior leaders at the top 13 agencies by revenue and the top two agencies by revenue growth in 2013.

While the decision to publish Caucasian-only faces as “PR leaders” may have been unintentional, the message conveyed is clear: “PR leaders” do not include people of color, minorities or of different ethnicity. At least not in 2014; and 2014 wasn’t light years away. It was just one year ago.

Scary. And sad.

Example 2: The release of the State of the PR Industry report from the National Black Public Relations Society. One of the claims that ran a chill down my spine was the fact that professional desire to have a sustained interest in career growth and advancement, yet do not have access to sponsors or see others like them in larger key roles. Breaking through is an obstacle course made up of glass ceilings, sticky floors, and porcelain/ceramic vaults because practitioners are contained in limited roles, have not moved beyond mentorship into sponsorship relationships, and are not exposed to new clients or new business opportunities. Dr. Rochelle Ford and Dr. Clarke Caywood bounced these findings off the work of Applebaum, Walton and Southerland (2015) and Hewlett and Green (2015).

Although the players have changed and the outlets where this matter is discussed have morphed, the conversation is still the same. The industry isn’t diverse. The industry has a retention problem. The industry has a recruitment problem. The industry has a problem. The industry should do something about it. The industry should start something to reverse these trends.

It’s the same verse of the same hymnal, sung by the same members of the choir to other members of the choir. We just change the riff and add a new falsetto every few times. I just hope that people from the congregation (our PR peers across all sectors and organizations) hear the choir, feel something swell up in their souls, and start to do something meaningful. As someone from Texas once told me, “they align the tongues in their shoes with the tongues in their mouths.”

I doubt that will happen until there is a sudden shift or movement. There must be something that jostles the industry out of its soporific stupor about diversity. A stringent call to action against the cognitive biases that frame and shape who gets into the door and who get asked to climb up the corporate trellis. A gauntlet tossed down. A final notice that the days of talk are limited. A strident challenge that calls out that the pipeline the industry leaders continually say is leaky has a flawed framework.

Maybe 2016 is the year for the movement to launch and to initiate a real call to action.

Maybe 2016 is the year when we stop talking about diversity within the same circles but push the dialogue to other.

Maybe something will pop off in 2016.

Until that time, I am going to pick up my hymn book to continue to sing while thinking of a master plan.