Bruce Horovitz’ Story on Minorities in Public Relations Should Have Included All Colors

The situation regarding the abysmal representation of minorities in public relations is unfortunately true. But I resent the implication that the fault lies with either the profession or its practitioners.

Item: As an instructor of public relations for the past 11 years, I have been constantly disappointed at the low attendance by minorities. At the UCLA extension program, there have been virtually none; at Cal State Northridge, there were a very few; only at Cal State Los Angeles was there a noticeable ethnic balance.

Item: As the owner of my own firm in Sherman Oaks for the past 22 years, I receive dozens of resumes from job seekers each year. But I cannot recall ever having received one from a recognizably Asian name, nor any from an apparently black applicant, and perhaps a very small handful from Latin-sounding names.

Item: On those occasions when I have advertised a job opportunity, I do not ever recall having had an inquiry from an obvious minority applicant.

If there are minorities wanting to get into this field, where are they? If I specifically wanted to hire based solely on ethnic considerations, how could I find them?

Item: When I was president of the Los Angeles chapter of Public Relations Society of America in 1985, I had to search mightily to find minorities to get involved in leadership roles.

I suspect that minorities might be discouraged from pursuing a PR career because of their academic shortcomings. I had upper-division university students at Cal State Los Angeles who were writing at perhaps an eighth-grade level.

Yes, there is a problem, but like so many problems in our society today, the solution is complex and somewhat obscure.

As to that disgraceful situation in Atlanta, where one-third of the practitioners believe that their white clients would be “less comfortable working with minorities,” that would be an unthinkable situation with my enlightened clients and, I would hope, with my local colleagues as well.

ROGER BECK

Sherman Oaks