Marketing while Black: commentary on the Galak and Kahn 2019 Academic Marketing Climate Survey

Diversity serves to enrich decision-making, innovation, reputation, and performance. The marketing academy, a microcosm of business and society, is making slow advances in diversity efforts. The study by Galak and Kahn (2021) seeks to codify experiences of gender and race within the marketing academy to elevate awareness and to provide recommendations that may address some of the issues raised. In this commentary, we focus on opportunities to more deeply investigate the complex impact of race on careers and advancement in the marketing academy. Essential further research would advance our understanding of the role of systemic racism—and how it affects the people who are given opportunities to become scholars as well as the research they are encouraged to conduct or can successfully publish in top journals. To more fully understand the climate for traditionally underrepresented faculty members in the USA, it likely necessitates a multi-method approach to generate understanding and insights before developing potential recommendations. To address these types of research questions, we propose a set of studies that would allow an understanding of not only how individuals experience racism, but also how that racism is perpetuated through university admissions, hiring, and promotion decisions. We not only recommend approaches to understand how to increase the presence of historically underrepresented groups in Marketing academia, but also how to enable the full integration and participation of these scholars at all levels in the academic hierarchy, and across all types of institutions.