Significance of race in the US undergraduate public relations educational landscape: Reflections of former public relations students

Statement of purpose for study

As critical scholarship has and continues to gain more acceptance in the public relations discipline (Boyd and Waymer, 2011; Curtin and Gaither, 2005; L’Etang, 2005; Waymer and Heath, 2007, 2016), scholars who aim to study race critically ask questions such as: What would the discipline of public relations look like if “race” was placed at the center of research inquiry, design, and execution? (Waymer and Heath, 2015). Using CRT (see Delgado and Stefancic, 2012) as a theoretical lens, we seek to understand the important aspects in young, diverse, public relations professionals’ collegiate (social and public relations coursework) development. AS Pompper’s (2005) seminal publication introducing CRT to the study of public relations, a small but growing cadre of scholars have used race and/or CRT as a guiding framework for scholarly inquiry (Edwards, 2012, 2013; Logan, 2016; Waymer, 2010, 2012a, 2012b, 2015, Waymer and Heath, 2016). It is via this CRT lens that we explore the challenges of creating and stocking a pipeline of diverse students for industry.

While the study that follows interviews racially diverse millennials to determine the extent to which their race played a role in their collegiate success (a functionalist pursuit), we take care as not to propagate the dysfunctional aspects of studying race in public relations scholarship by either segmenting publics into priority groups exclusively (Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013) or by treating race as an attribute of a public which can be instrumentalized for the benefit of an organization. Thus, while we privilege race in theorizing and analysis, the appendix lists participants by both race and gender to both acknowledge and show sensitivity toward complex, intersectional identities of practitioners. Additionally, while one by-product of our analysis is to explore possibilities, via the public relations education-to-industry pipeline, for greater representation and diversity among public relations professionals so that organizations can be more effective in obtaining strategic objectives, we take care to balance that functional desired outcome with the fact that underrepresented persons are ends unto themselves and are more than what they are sometimes pigeonholed to be (Tindall, 2009; Waymer and Heath, 2015). In the section that follows, we highlight relevant education and public relations education literature with a particular attention paid to building a diverse pipeline in public relations education.

Building a diverse pipeline through public relations education

While this study’s focus is on building a diverse pipeline of students via the undergraduate public relations education program, we recognize that scholars in many other disciplines are also engaged in such pursuits. In fact, for years, there has been a push by universities to attract more women and underrepresented racial/ethnic persons into STEM fields. Several prominent support and advocacy programs to this effect come to mind including but not limited to: Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).

The Journal for Multicultural Education, in particular, has a track record for granting space and a platform for academics pursuing questions related to attracting, retaining and/or graduating underrepresented students – particularly in STEM disciplines. For example, authors, via scholarly contributions to special issues in this journal, have explored the following: predicting underrepresented students’ success in STEM disciplines (Gipson, 2016); identifying strategies for increasing diversity and inclusion in STEM (Jones, 2016) including increasing their access to these educational opportunities (Hinnant-Crawford, 2016; Wright et al., 2016); building supportive communities for and around these students; and promoting underrepresented student success in these disciplines (Covington et al., 2017). Additional studies in this vein have also assessed summer bridge programs in STEM – programs that are designed to help underrepresented students transition successfully from K-12 education to collegiate education in STEM disciplines (Johnson, 2016); and studies have assessed students’ motivation to pursue doctorates in STEM – which is an important consideration given that underrepresented undergraduates often desire to see mentors in their academic disciplines from similar racial and ethnic backgrounds (McGee et al., 2016). While STEM has and will continue to be an important area of scholarly inquiry for diversity pipeline initiatives, we argue that a similar focus should be directed to applied communication disciplines such as public relations education because of the unprecedented interest and growth in these majors and the profession.

In fact, many current rankings, including the Princeton Review (2014; see also Karlan, 2014), place communication, journalism and related academic programs among the ten most popular majors on college campuses across the USA. According to the US Department of Education Institution of Education Sciences’ 1971 (year of inception) through 2012 data, few degrees (such as computer and information science and health professions) have grown at a percentage rate equal to or larger than communication-related disciplines, which increased more than 700 per cent since 1971 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). We can only assume that this increase in student enrollment overall has also led to an increase in the enrollment of students from underrepresented groups. If that is the case, then why is there a dearth of underrepresented practitioners in the field of public relations – in which the major should be a pipeline to the industry? Are things happening while students are undergraduates to dissuade them from pursuing careers in the practice of public relations?

There is general agreement between public relations educators and executives about the intended purpose of public relations curriculum in the USA which is to prepare students adequately for the practice (DiStaso et al., 2009; Gallicano et al., 2014; Todd, 2009). While that overarching agreement is noteworthy, adherence to CRT would require us to problematize that overarching agreement and probe deeper: In what ways would race play a role in students’ adequate preparation (both educationally and socially) for industry? This study focuses on in-depth accounts of early career practitioners, both underrepresented and white practitioners, and their assessments of the role of the undergraduate public relations curriculum, student groups such as the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), and mentors. This study also focuses on these early career practitioners’ assessments of the effect that the curriculum, PRRSA, and mentors had on them and the role that these “career-preparatory” elements played in participants’ current careers and success in hopes of providing more nuanced answers to these questions.

Thus, to increase the racial and ethnic diversity in the public relations workforce, several scholars suggest that the industry must begin building a more diverse pipeline of millennial practitioners through collegiate education and socialization (Armour, 2005; Brown et al., 2011; Gallicano, 2013; Waymer et al., 2017). Therefore, there is a need to understand the challenges that successful underrepresented students faced in comparison to their white counterparts during their collegiate career. When considering the broader issue of student involvement and its impact on career preparation, Astin (1984) noted three areas for examination. The first area Astin (1984) discussed, knowledge skill sets, consists of those items related to the academic-specific knowledge for developing specific skills that graduates are expected to master in preparation to enter the workforce. The second, overall career skills preparation, relates to knowledge of the industry graduates are expected to develop from academic programs, mentors and internships in preparation for entry-level positions. The third, social development, refers to the emphasis programs place on developing personal skills for maximizing success within social context of the workplace. Parvu et al. (2014) argued that these three themes closely match the qualities companies expect from graduates: academic-specific knowledge (i.e. “hard” skills), interpersonal competencies (i.e. “soft” skills) and work-based experience, such as completed internships (Parvu et al., 2014). While employers within any field expect graduates to master subject-specific information, most also require an overall set of baseline skills considered as relevant for becoming successful within academic settings and developing into proficient and productive employees. Examining the racial differences in student involvement could help identify gaps in support for underrepresented students and establish better educational, social and professional opportunities for them to become successful in the public relations field. To uncover differences in student involvement between underrepresented students and whites across the three areas that Astin (1984) discussed, the following research questions are posed:

Method

We used email interviews to gather data from young professionals. Although email interviews are impersonal in nature, because of a lack of the use of social cues and non-verbal communication (Hunt and McHale, 2007), email interviews are more cost-effective, expand the range of participants that one could interview, and this method allows participants to reflect longer on their answers, which could result in more detail – whereby participants might share information they would not normally share face-to face. We chose this method because we wanted to empower participants to detail their experiences with race, in their own words, and on their own time schedule. We asked participants to identify their race and/or ethnicity. We also asked participants questions such as:

Results

The first research question examined the role and significance that race played in respondents’ academic success – measured in terms of success in completing and learning key objectives via the public relations curriculum. Half of the Latina, African American and Asian American respondents indicated their race had no impact on their educational development; in their view, race neither helped nor hindered their development. The other half of these respondents noted that being underrepresented was not necessarily a hindrance to their success; rather, being underrepresented was uncomfortable for them at times, as they believed they had to prove themselves – more than their white counterparts – in the classroom:

As a minority, I do feel that race always plays an intricate role in every aspect of life. I was one of only a handful of African Americans enrolled in my school’s program, and in some aspects I had to “prove” myself.

In addition, being underrepresented in the classroom was often uncomfortable for minority students:

As an African American woman I had to sometimes be uncomfortable in order to ensure that I was receiving the same opportunities that all student received. Even today it sometimes feels like I have to fight societal images placed on black women. When I present myself I want to ensure that I not only present myself in a favorable way for me, but for the other black women who may follow me or be up next for my seat.

There were also white students who witnessed the extra effort required of underrepresented students in the classroom environment:

If not exceptionally academic, the minority students may not experience the extensive advising, knowledge of opportunities or receive special attention from college administrators that their Caucasian peers receive.

Respondents also mentioned that minority students are clearly an unrepresented population with the public relations profession and classroom:

There are not enough minorities, a black, female friend once told me that she was intimidated when she walked into a lecture hall full of white sorority girls. It is intimidating, but it is not a problem we cannot overcome.

The second research question inquired if respondents perceived race as a factor in their social development while attending school. Social development is measured in terms of acquiring soft skills, ability to secure internships and ability to network with professionals. Overall, most (18 of 22) respondents indicated race had little or no effect on their own individual social and pre-professional development. Yet, almost all (21 of 22) respondents expressed awareness that race can shape how others perceive abilities. Two major themes emerged:

1. Most students expressed being aware of the existence of racial differences in society. They also recognized how people can be treated differently based on raced, even though most participants indicated that race did not greatly affect them individually.

2. Perceptions of how race potentially affects social and pre-professional development varied according to the race of the respondent.

While the majority of respondents, as indicated above, expressed race did not impact them personally, most (5 of 6) white respondents expressed this sentiment:

I do not believe that race has an impact on a person’s ability to develop as a PR student or any student for that matter. I believe that if a student wants a crutch to lean on or claim things didn’t happen for them because of x, y, and z then they will come up with one…. In my opinion the ability to develop in this aspect comes from one’s own desires, not the assigned traits they were given at birth.

Yet, the majority of underrepresented participants expressed agreement with the above sentiment, but added the caveat that for them personally, it was their abilities and desire to succeed that shaped their career paths rather than race:

I believe that race only becomes a factor when you make it one. I never thought about my race or gender while I developed my skills. I just see myself as a human; as an American.

While most respondents emphasized often that race did not personally affect their ability to build social relationships, this is not to imply that experiences of students based on racial differences did not occur. Both male and female underrepresented respondents gave examples of being aware of how they can be judged differently than their white counterparts:

As an African-American woman, it can sometimes feel that I have to fight societal images of black women before I open my mouth and utter a word.

Underrepresented males also indicated perceptions that others rely on racial stereotypes within the social settings in which they were a part. These beliefs can be seen as manifesting in ways that influenced these underrepresented males’ behavior choices. A hyperawareness of self-presentation was noted as a means to confront and change other’s negative bias. Consider the following:

I pride myself on my appearance because I know the perception most people have when they look at younger black men is not positive. I try and defy those stereotypes and break the mold by wearing something that makes a person second-guess their assumptions…. My appearance is the only thing that I have control over and I want to ensure that I am putting my best foot forward.”

White respondents for the most part indicated race as a nonfactor personally; however, they recognized that race may affect social opportunities related to careers. Several respondents expressed that being white can be both a disadvantage and advantage at times. Disadvantage occurs in their ineligibility to receive earmarked funding allocated for the specific purpose of advancing underrepresented student achievement and representation in college. Advantage occurs,

[In] Being in the majority of public relations professionals (white, female), I think the way these two characteristics affect me most is the fact that I have a lot of competition that looks and speaks like I do. That being said, it may have also helped me since I “fit the mold” of the traditional candidate.

Although relatively few examples of race specifically impacting social development were given, most respondents did mention race as something that just is in society and impacts in numerous ways. For example, in one response, a student stressed self-determination as the main factor of her success, stating “I would attribute my ability to build networks to my personality and willingness to learn more so than my race/gender.” Yet, the same respondent also echoed what most respondents expressed as an overall recognition that race is intertwined throughout academic programs and society:

As a minority, I do feel that race always plays an intricate role in every aspect of life. I was one of only a handful of African-Americans enrolled in my school’s program so I feel that in some aspects I had to work harder to ‘prove’ myself.

In discussing race, several respondents expressed the complexity of determining to what degree it impacts social development, citing other inter-sectionality factors, such as socio-economic status and peer interactions, especially within student organizations, as interacting with race as a means of either providing or limiting opportunities for the underrepresented students:

Class and race go hand in hand. If we consider hierarchy and degrees of separation, the Caucasian student from a lower class is still more relatable for the Caucasian staff member than the African American student. In the university setting, the physical appearance of said Caucasian student is likely to be similar to the Caucasian student from a higher socioeconomic class…. However, there is no outfit that the African American student can wear in the classroom that will disguise their skin color. Unlike socioeconomic status, skin color is always apparent. The Caucasian student who does not have the extra time to hang around the office may receive the benefits of favoritism in a delayed fashion but they are likely to receive them whereas their African American peers may very well not receive them at all.”

In addition to the perception of being treated differently by mentors based on race, respondents also noted other non-program and non-career preparation factors that influenced either positively or negatively their social development while an undergraduate:

The race division at times was just as distracting as the Greek vs. non-Greek issues in the classroom. I have to say I noticed more negative and heated things that occurred between students as a result of race and/or the Greeks (many times the two were intertwined) than positive. I do not believe there is much the professors could do to help this issue. I think one of the biggest issues is the Greek community blatantly excluding minorities.

Also, when research shows that social networks are key to underrepresented students success – especially in the case of African American success (D’Augelli and Hershberger, 1993; Palmer and Gasman, 2008) – it is clear how underrepresented students’ lack of access to organizations such as sororities (when these underrepresented students attend predominantly white institutions (PWIs) can place them in a place of “less advantage” in comparison to their white counterparts – especially when this form of student engagement has been found recently to have a positive relationship with college satisfaction, grades, retention, and 4-year graduation among female students (Bowman and Holmes, 2017).

Overall, the majority sentiment was that participants did not experience either negative or positive effects of race relating to developing social skills for public relations professions. However, race is still noted mentioned indirectly when a white female participant was asked about race and the social development/dimensions of the undergraduate experience.

I noticed the majority of students sat with people of their same race in the larger classes. I never noticed an instance where someone went out of his or her way to exclude someone. Usually whites and minorities divided themselves without interacting.

This statement seems innocuous but does not take into account the motivation for underrepresented students to self-segregate. (For a detailed explanation of why underrepresented persons tend to segregate when they are in large groups such as cafeterias and in this case the big lecture hall, see the work of psychologist Tatum, 1997).

Discussion

Using CRT as a theoretical lens, we sought an explanation for a practical problem: what can explain the small number of underrepresented practitioners in the public relations industry? Like Logan (2016), we want to use CRT as a critical analytical tool in hopes that it “could one day serve as a productive source of creative inspiration and innovative praxis for public relations practitioners, students and scholars if it were to be proactively integrated […]” (p. 106). We chose to focus on the collegiate pipeline to see whether the issue could be explained in part by events occurring during college. Our findings indicate that the dearth of underrepresented practitioners is not the by-product of an unwelcoming environment, lack of mentoring or lack of teaching race critically in the undergraduate public relations curriculum. Thus, in terms of RQ1 and RQ2, based on participant responses racialized experiences in the undergraduate public relations environment do not provide explanation for the few numbers of underrepresented persons entering the profession. However, participants – especially those from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups – did acknowledge that race remains relevant in society. Yet, race does not or did not affect them personally as undergraduates in public relations.

We, however, seek to interrogate this finding further as is expected from an application CRT framework. Perhaps the former students are in denial about the effects of race on their education. Maybe the researchers’ prior acquaintance with the participants may have affected the study’s results in this way. As the Co-PI researchers who were primarily responsible for the data for this study, it is important to note that we are also underrepresented faculty – we’re both African American. Being sensitive to issues of race ourselves (Fox, 2001, for a guide for instructors who want to promote informed and honest discussion about race and racism in college classrooms), we might have created classroom environments that allowed students to focus more on the content delivered and not on the racialized classroom space. Another way we interrogate this finding is by offering the possibility that these participants perhaps suffered from the “third person effect”, in which problems (in this case, race) affect only others, but not themselves. Perhaps, the real finding is not that racial barriers and challenges are not noticed, but rather that they are not admitted by the participants, especially by ex-students to their former professors. This is compounded by the fact that we are more likely to stay in touch with our most successful students. If this is indeed the case that participants are minimizing or diminishing the role that race played in the development of students, such actions serve to maintain the hegemonic power structure or the dominant discourse of “individual meritocracy”.

Conversely, if we trust what emerged from our data, then we as academics and scholars should view these findings as progress; young professionals (who represent graduates of communication programs from various US universities) – and especially those who identify as underrepresented – did not perceive race as playing a significant role in their undergraduate experiences. This indicates that if underrepresented students can be recruited successfully into the major, racial barriers will not play a factor in their overall success and graduation. If this finding is generalizable, then this suggests that efforts to diversify the public relations education-to-industry pipeline should focus primarily on attracting underrepresented students to the public relations major and secondarily focus on maintaining a welcoming environment.

Thus, if we accept these findings, then we have to accept that some other factors beyond graduation, such as organizational workplace culture, glass ceiling effects or graduates not identifying with the organizations that initially employ them, lead to talented underrepresented leaving the profession prematurely. We interviewed early career practitioners for this study; however, it would be interesting to see whether these underrepresented practitioners remain in the profession in 10 years. In a follow-up study, researchers could identify underrepresented practitioners that have left the profession to determine whether the industry needs to address organizational culture issues to retain underrepresented practitioners. It does little to recruit these persons if there is no mechanism in place for retention.

In sum, scholars have used CRT successfully to highlight the lived experiences and challenges that underrepresented practitioners face (Edwards, 2010). CRT remains a useful lens to explore issues of demographic disparities in the public relations practice in the USA and in the US undergraduate public relations educational space; however, our support for the use of the construct via this study is not as strong as we would like it to be. Maybe the combination of the higher education classroom culture, the focus on critical thinking, and the development of technical skills via a rigid, five-course sequence, and the homogenous age population is powerful enough to blunt the effects of race in the social and curricula preparation for industry? Another plausible explanation is the declining significance of race (Wilson, 1978) in higher education environments – whereby an environment that champions liberal and diverse thinking lessens the effects of race alone on students who are living and “being” in these environments. Therefore, we may need to pay greater attention to the intersections of identity including race, class and gender and the roles they collectively play (Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013) in the lived experiences of public relations practitioners (and students).

Regardless, what is noteworthy is that underrepresented students in large part did not deem their race as a critical barrier in their public relations instruction. If this is valid, then diversifying the profession lies in getting underrepresented students into the major in larger numbers, getting them into the profession in larger numbers, and keeping them in the profession for longer time periods. While much of our attention to pipeline issues in higher education focuses on STEM, we make a compelling argument that more attention should be paid to diversifying the applied communication pipeline via higher education. When research shows that in times of organizational crisis (terrorist attacks, chemical plant explosions and hurricane evacuations) underrepresented populations prefer to be communicated with by someone who is both sensitive to their needs and similar to them (Heath et al., 2009), professional diversity is not just in vogue, but can be the difference between life or death. It is imperative that we echo industry’s call and bring our research expertise to the table to address diversity education-to-industry pipeline issues head-on. This study is our attempt to do just that.