ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the importance of history in the construction of UK public relations (PR) as a professional field underpinned by racial structures. It provides an overview of the origins and manifestation of post-racism, before considering the historical racial hierarchies that underpin discrimination and stigmatisation in PR. The chapter focuses on alternative histories that provide Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) practitioners with the capacity to resist racism and assert their right to belong. In UK PR, the social, cultural, political and economic dimensions of Britain’s history, and the role played by PR in helping to create them, contribute to the ways in which Whiteness is realised, and BAME practitioners. In PR, the professional habitus has fostered racialisation of BAME practitioners and established white identity as the occupational norm. In PR, competence is framed in terms of the figure of the client, which appears in discourses that circulate through industry association websites, trade press and in publicity for major consultancies.
