Diversity Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

2023 National Scouting Jamboree Highlights Adventure, Achievement

For the next 10 days, 15,000 scouts from around the country will camp out in the wooded hills and hollows of Fayette County. The action-packed 2023 National Scouting Jamboree takes youth development and diversity to a whole new level.

Entering the park, visitors can hear “swooshes” from five multi-strung zip lines stretching more than a half-mile over the nearly 11,000 acre Summit Bechtel Reserve. Dubbed “the adventure of a lifetime,” scouts can skateboard and scuba dive, there’s archery and shooting ranges, fishing, rock climbing, disc golf.

Fourteen-year-old Steven Belk, from Troop 3239 in Virginia, said, “there’s never nothing that’s not to do here.”

“This is just a good time to be a scout,” Belk said. “They’re just trying to involve people from all aspects of life, say like zip lines. BMX biking, a bunch of fun stuff, and we learn stuff, too.”

In 2019, the Boy Scouts of America expanded to Scouts BSA, opening up its ranks to female members. This year is the first National Jamboree to include female participants.

Fourteen-year-old Ruth Olsen, from a co-ed troop in Utah, said “it’s about time.”

“I think it’s good that girls have the same opportunities as boys,” Olsen said. “I think girls are a lot more capable than people think we are.”

California Scout Leader Andrew Blessum is sharing living history at a 1910 mock up of America’s first scout camp. Even though there are 13 cell towers and more than 250 Wi-Fi hot spots spread out over the camp’s 16 square miles, Blessum said the initial pledge of scouting as a value based organization hasn’t changed in more than a century.

“I believe the things that we still have at the core of scouting are outdoor living and character development,” Blessum said. “One of the founders himself, Luther Gulick of the YMCA, actually preaches that mankind is not complete without physical, mental and spiritual symmetry. And that itself is really the basis of our scout oath.”

The scouts camp in tents and cook their own food. Scout Aaron Anderson, from an all-female troop in Charleston, South Carolina, said the leadership and practical life skills scouting teaches help kids succeed.

“A lot of those things that we learn in our leadership programs I use in my daily life,” Anderson said. “I use it at school for interviews and things like that. A lot of us have been in situations where we’ve had training in emergency first aid and to be able to help people in emergencies. We know these skills and we can take them out and use them in the real world.”

And then, there’s 13-year-old, First Class Scout Max Dehnke from Milan, Illinois. Dehnke was enjoying hanging out at the busy scout patch trading tables and shared his reason for becoming a Boy Scout.

“My parents said, ‘Max, you need to do something.’ I’m like, sports? Or – I have all my friends in this big group thingy where you go camping and get pocket knives. So it was a no brainer. Boy Scouts,” he said.

A “no brainer” at the National Scouting Jamboree that enriches brain and brawn.

W.Va. 4-H Expands Its Educational Focus

West Virginia’s 4-H presence at this year’s state fair demonstrated a much more diverse educational platform from its agriculture base.

With representation from all 55 counties, the sprawling 4-H State Fair exhibit hall was not big enough to contain the nearly 3,000 student project entries.

First organized in 1912, West Virginia 4-H has more than a century of experience in youth development. In 2022, there are about 142,000 4-H club members in all 55 West Virginia counties.

Club members may also learn about higher education opportunities and even be eligible for scholarships offered by WVU Extension.

State 4-H Curriculum Specialist Jenny Murray said a strength of the organization has always been to embrace diversity. She said 4-H is doing just that with an expanded instruction platform.

“We’re in the business of educating our next generation of West Virginians in the areas of agriculture all the way through things,” Murray said. “Areas such as cooking, rocketry, science, healthy lifestyles, and being good citizens in our communities.”

Murray said the biggest challenge for 4-H is getting all student members access to resources like transportation, mentors and financial support.

“For the young people in our state, some of them are positioned to have better access than others,” Murray said. “Trying to break down those barriers so that all youth have the same access is probably our biggest challenge.”

Anyone between the ages of 9 and 21 can join 4-H with a parent or guardian’s permission. Younger kids, ages 5–7, who are interested in the practices of 4-H can start in the Cloverbud program, which focuses more on fun and social activities that set the stage for future learning.

To find a 4-H club or 4-H Cloverbud club in your area, contact your county Extension office.

Public Hearing Comments Call For Rejection Of ‘Anti-Racism’ Act

How do we teach – or not teach – our children about race, ethnicity or sex? At a public hearing in the House Chamber, West Virginia lawmakers heard the public’s views on the so-called ‘anti- racism’ act.

At the meeting 24 people spoke out against Senate Bill 498, while four people supported the hot button bill. The proposal forbids school instruction that one race, ethnic group or sex is superior to another.

Howard Swint, a parent and former American history teacher, argued the bill reverses any progress in promoting diversity.

“I think this is just another wave of southern, white-privileged bigotry going through the government,” Swint said. “The kind of thing that put the Stonewall Jackson statue on our grounds 100 years ago.”

West Virginia attorney Kitty Dooley said there are numerous ways to support anti-racism, but she also said this bill would chill educators from teaching history and give lawyers a field day.

‘You’re giving me a cause of action for every discussion of the enslaved African-American,” Dooley said. “A cause of action for confderates glorification, of lynching, of domestic terrorism following reconstruction, of Dred Scott, of Plessy vs. Ferguson.”

Among the few supporting the bill, Barry Holstein said passage would offer teachers personal protection along with lesson plan freedom.

“Contrary to what you’ve heard, this bill does not prohibit the education and debate of the way race or sex has impacted history or current events, including the causes,” Holstein said.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, said the bill does not prohibit controversial discussion, does not call for lawsuits, only a reporting mechanism and will not have a chilling effect on teachers.

“Let’s just say this, if you’re teaching history and you are teaching facts, you have nothing to worry about,” Rucker said.

The anti-racism bill passed the Senate 21-12 and is now in the House Education Committee.

History Day At The Capitol Showcases Ingenuity, Diversity

On History Day at the Capitol, highlights of West Virginia’s rich and diverse past come to life.

Groups and organizations came from throughout the state to share their piece of history, like the West Virginia Sons of the American Revolution. With 13 state chapters and 1400 members strong, WVSOAR acts as parade color guards, properly retires American flags and locates and marks revolutionary war graves. Color Guard Commander Ed Cromley said with our nation’s 250th anniversary coming up, new member recruitment is the task at hand.

“We try to portray our founding as accurately as possible while highlighting those people that really did remarkable things to defeat the British and start our country up as an independent state,” Cromley said.

Huntington’s Museum of Radio and Technology came with a table full of history. The Harveytown museum houses more than 3,000 communication devices that date back nearly 200 years. Museum curator Geoff Bourne explained that among the displays shown and stories told, the tale of West Virginia’s Dr. Mahlon Loomis, not the iconic Italian Marconi, may be the true inventor of wireless radio.

“There was a gentleman up in Terra Alta, called Dr. Mahlon Loomis, and he had a patent and everything on wireless in the Civil War,” Bourne said. “And Loomis was actually sending signals from one mountain top to another and was trying to get the army interested in it. But he was just a little too ahead of his time.”

A national Johnny Cash tribute show comes to the Mountain State in June. A show highlight is Johnny and June Carter Cash’s Wedding song, “Jackson”. You know it: ‘We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout…’

West Virginia Music Hall of Fame Director Michael Lipton showcased the man who wrote “Jackson” – West Virginia native and West Virginia Music Hall of Fame member Billy Edd Wheeler, who Lipton says is still going strong at 89 years old.

“He’s still great and has a great sense of humor,” Lipton said. “And he went from literally nothing out of high coal Boone County to study playwriting at Yale. He represents West Virginia well.”

From tri-corner hats, to “tune it in”, to troubadours, diversity shows it’s age on History Day.

Coalition Convenes Black-Led Policy Advocacy Event

Black West Virginians say their contributions and needs are not widely known or appreciated by the media or in legislative policy making. In 2022 they are doing more than just speaking out.

In the capitol rotunda, the recent Black-led advocacy event was part policy push and part old time revival.

Rev. Matthew Watts is pastor at Charleston’s Grace Bible Church. He said he wants to see a West Virginia legislative package that would earmark some of the millions of federal COVID-19 relief dollars to go to social and economic recovery for minorities and the poor.

“The pandemic has imposed unprecedented challenges on every institution in American society,” Watts said. “Particularly in the areas of health, housing education, employment and economics.”

To that end, the event featured Rev. Kobi Little, the president of Community Partnerships for Public Health International. He has organized the Mountain State Safe and Healthy Communities Coalition to encourage vaccination in hesitant communities.

“We’re encouraging people to get vaccinated because we know that the vaccines prevent people from being severely ill from COVID, from being hospitalized, and from passing away,” Little said.

The Black-led policy coalition presented the legislature with a series of bills that are already part of state law that they said needed funding, execution, or both. For example, Watts said 2017’s House Bill 2724 that focused on Improving public health and addressing poverty through community development was never funded or executed according to law.

Other examples included Senate Bill 573 from 2004, a minority economic development bill that was never funded or executed and Senate Bill 611, from 2012, a pilot project to improve outcomes for at-risk youth that has ended and needs re-activation.

Sen Owens Brown, D-Ohio, is the first African-American male to serve in the West Virginia Senate. Brown said the issue is not the obvious one.

“But the real struggle, it’s not about black versus white. It’s about rich versus poor,” Brown said. “Frederick Douglass said it’s about the class struggle. What you’re doing today here with the bills and things is about class struggle.”

Q&A: How George Floyd Woke The Ohio Valley… For A Little Bit

A longtime community leader in the Northern Panhandle, Ron Scott Jr. was born and raised in a family of community advocates in Wheeling. He founded and directs the Ohio Valley African American Student Association — an organization that “encourages & promotes higher and continued education for Black and Bi-Racial students in the Ohio Valley.” Now he’s the Director of Cultural Diversity and Community Outreach at the YWCA in Wheeling. The mission of the YWCA is, “Eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all.”

West Virginia Public Broadcasting met up with him to learn about some of the changes he’s seen in his community in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Ron Scott Jr. is currently helping to coordinate a multi-year plan to address racial issues across public and private high schools throughout Ohio County. And since the killing of George Floyd began with an altercation over a counterfeit 20 dollar bill, the YWCA has also launched what they’re calling “Change for a 20 Challenge” asking community members to donate a 20 dollar bill and post why they donate in social media channels with #Changefora20. Funds are slated to go to scholarships, and programs and events designed to address diversity, human rights, race relations, and ultimately to cultivate unified community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NubR22EzwU

Glynis Board: The YWCA in Wheeling began in 1906, right? Talk to me about its history of dedication to diversity.

Ron Scott Jr.: I’ve never seen an agency that has “eliminating racism” in their mission statement. That’s it. And it’s before “empowering women.” “Eliminating racism, empowering women…” They did something — they called it the Blue Triangle, during segregation. There weren’t services for black women and children and families. It just didn’t exist. So they went out of their way to make a separate agency called the Blue Triangle that was affiliated with the YWCA and it just served black women and children and families. It was around for a while through segregation stuff through Jim Crow. And I’m amazed that I never learned anything about that. Or it’s never been celebrated — the bravery of an agency like that back then. Because you weren’t getting rewarded for that sort of stuff, then. You weren’t considered a visionary for doing that. You were just breaking the rules. And now they were on the right side of history. So it’s kind of cool to be affiliated with an agency that has historically been on the right side of history.

Board: Have you seen an uptick in interest and in people been coming to you for guidance in the wake of George Floyd’s killing?

Scott: Definitely. And me and a good friend of mine, Jermaine Lucius, we’ve been trying to figure out why this is so different, because the act itself — this isn’t new. Especially not to us. This isn’t a new thing. This isn’t a new phenomenon. I think it may have been the combination of the quarantines from the virus, people just being at home, just watching TV, and it dominating the news stories, and nothing else can take your eyes off. There’s no football games and basketball games; there’s nothing to distract you. So they kind of got to see it, and really let it soak in this time.

And the outpouring and outcry has been incredible to me. I’ve never experienced this kind of outrage from the white community for an issue that, in essence, doesn’t affect them. It’s not like George Floyd was a white guy that was just doing this thing and got murdered. But I’ve been just inundated with, “What can I do?” “How can I make my agency better? My community better?”

I thought originally I was going to get a week out of this. And so I’m jumping on whenever I can. Whoever asked me anything, I’m on it. And a week passes, and then two weeks pass, and a month passes and people are still asking me, “What can I do?” And they don’t just want to put a little bandaid on. They’re like, “What can we do that is sustaining?” “How can we change the culture of this agency or this hair salon?” I’ve been speaking to groups that I just didn’t even know, had those kind of concerns.

There was a local hair salon who had an issue that was race related because people were speaking out we’re seeing these things happen and play out in front of us right on TV. So folks bean to speak out and made it tense and uncomfortable in the salon. And the owner asked me to come and speak to all the staff and we just had a great conversation about their views.

Because I don’t ever go into the situation with, “You’re wrong. Let me tell you why.” And so we just kind of flesh out whatever it is they already think, what they already feel, and who they want to be, and how they want to be perceived by other people. So once we fleshed all that out, we then realize places like salons are social hubs. People come there and get more candid than they do in doctors offices and therapists offices. And so being able to do that kind of a presentation and talk at a place like that, it has a ripple effect. And that’s how real change happens. You know, it’s not me standing in front of the city building with a megaphone. It’s having presentations at like hair salons or community centers, places like that. And all these places are asking, they’re saying, “What can we do?”

Board: Is there a common theme in these conversations?

Scott: Well, there’s an underlying theme that a lot of people that reach out to me seem to be working with: the issue of them being perceived a racist sometimes seems to be worse than being one. So what they want to make sure happens is — I don’t want to do or say anything that might make folks believe that I’m a racist, or I just have no real sensitivity or tolerance to anyone different than me. So it’s almost like they want me to come in and we do some assessment of the idea, like, “I’ve been in the city for a long time, and I’ve had a few black employees, and my roommate in college…” So we go through all of that sort of stuff. And it’s like they’re unsure because they’re seeing how the systematic racism has permeated almost every institution that they’ve loved. And now, it’s like — and I don’t know why now — they just seem to see it clearly. And some of them it scares them; some are in denial about it; and others just want to go to action. They’re like, “We got to fix this. I didn’t realize this is how you felt every day.” And they’re ready to go. So I’m like, let’s go then! I’m not slowing down. Not until they are.

Board: I hesitate to use the word “hope,” but how do you feel about the future? Do you think that with this more substantial sort of movement afoot, that there will actually be tangible policy changes and cultural shifts?

Scott: Right now, I think I’m hopeful for attitude shifts, paradigm shifts in thinking, and thinking and personalities — those kind of shifts are definitely happening. And I think we’re gonna to be able to see more of it. But I have begun lately to lose some of the hope because there are certain narratives that are like comfortable shoes to people, you know. And the newest one is the idea that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization that has an agenda that just kill random and innocent white people. I’ve had folks tell me that places are just like war zones now like Beirut and, you know, people don’t want to drive through them anymore. And that narrative, people have adopted it. It’s finally given me a little bit of pause where I can see this starting to lose some traction, because people are believing stuff that they haven’t seen. They haven’t experienced it. No one’s even telling them second or third hand. This is just an abstract idea someone’s just saying and they’re like, “Yes. That’s the case. Let me get back to being comfortable and live in my life. And just give me a few blinders. We need some leagues to come back, we need some games to start, we need something. So I could put these blinders back up and go back to business as usual.”

Because real change is uncomfortable. And for a minute there people were just ready to get uncomfortable. They were ready to hear this conversation. But with this idea that there’s a terrorist group called Black Lives Matter that’s just killing people, randomly and innocent people for no reasons. It just is a ridiculous notion but people are clinging to it. And I think that might slow us down.

I’ve been explaining to people, the Black Lives Matters and it isn’t even an organization in a sense. It’s a movement. It’s a sentiment. It’s an idea. I mean, yeah, they got a website. They got principles. There’s a founder. But so does #MeToo, but there’s not a #MeToo office or a board of directors for the #MeToo movement that could organize… No it’s the idea of it. And it’s one that resonates when you get it. When you understand that what you’re saying is black lives matter as well, too. Just like my life matters Black Lives Matter as well. Once you wrap your mind around it is such a simple sentiment and it’s so easy to get behind. But when you throw a little dose of fear in there people are ready to put the comfortable shoe back on, like, “Okay, they’re killing people. We’re good. We’re gonna stay in the house.”

Board: Well, what about here in West Virginia? I’m curious… I don’t even know what I’m curious about now. Now I’m just like, sad.

Scott: Don’t be sad. There’s good stuff. There’s still people — like tonight at five I’m speaking to a group in St. Clairsville. That didn’t exist maybe a month ago. All the stuff was going on. One woman had an interest, so she gathered up people who had an interest, and they want to … they just want to have a conversation to see if there’s more that they can learn, or if they can do better, and I love the idea that someone can still be teachable, nowadays. You can be a grown adult with kids, a successful job, and still say, “There’s stuff, I just don’t get still, and you might be able to help me get it.” And that’s fantastic. Because they’re not looking at that as a weakness. They’re just ready to go.