He probably thought it was a low-risk position to take. In the state where “minorities” comprise less than five percent of our population, he figured that he could kick minorities around, and nobody would say anything about it.
Where diversity is so lacking, why would anyone stand up for policies in favor of diversity, when most parts of the state have no real racial, national origin, nor religious diversity to speak of? No one is going to stand up for diversity in a state like West Virginia, I’m sure he thought.
Is that right? Is growth and diversity something only the “northern elites,” or the “West Coast liberals” want? Well, my ears keep hearing our people say we would like a better economy. States with the healthiest economies universally enjoy robust population growth.
We certainly don’t have population growth. Only one state in the United States is losing population: West Virginia.
If you’re fighting against diversity, equity and inclusion, are you fighting for uniformity, inequity, and exclusion, their opposites? How ridiculous.
The states with economies that are thriving have lots of our young people, including our best and brightest, flocking there for excitement and job opportunities. We in West Virginia certainly don’t have that. That “rocket ship to prosperity” we heard about eight years ago now looks a lot like the Camden Park roller coaster. We’re stepping off the ride at the same place as we got on the ride. We haven’t moved. We were 50th then, and we are 50th now. No amusement at this amusement park.
The themes upon which Gov. Morrissey ran for office are not West Virginia themes.
Apparently, though, with enough political advertising, you can make West Virginians think we have a problem we don’t have. I have not seen the teeming hordes of transsexuals pressing their “agenda” on my fellow citizens and me. To the point of DEI, I have not seen West Virginia as a hotbed of radical, coercive, and destructive policiesthat have ever advanced the interests of minorities over others. You haven’t seen that either.
These policies come from somewhere else. As we see from the top, cries against diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”) are watchwords for the national Republican Party that have nothing to do with West Virginia. Just as I take this stand for diversity, I have not been one to cry “carpetbagger,” and complain about somebody coming from another state to seek their fortune in West Virginia. But there IS a problem with somebody coming to govern West Virginia without knowledge about its people.
Our governor, in his spotlight moment, chose to focus on keeping the doors of understanding and welcoming closed, instead of throwing them open. He focused on retracting the ladder, instead inviting innovative people in to help us lift our state.
How foolish that a poor state – one of the poorest, by any measure – would direct its attention toward intimidating people to stay out, and making the state inhospitable to new residents, instead of rolling out the red carpet to all good people who would be willing to help row this boat.
Who needs diversity and the inclusion of new ideas? WE do! And the benefits to our rather non-diverse state are many.
First, we can help our children know and understand people who are not like them when they collaborate in school with people who see solutions differently. Whether they leave the state, or stay, we can know they will be ready to compete with others who have been gifted with a broad education that includes seeking and accepting people who don’t think exactly as they do. Encourage diversity for the sake of our children.
Second, if it’s not enough to be concerned for the future success of our young people in the job marketplace and the world, perhaps you can be persuaded by the need for the growth and survival of our state. West Virginia needs to attract people who want to live here to build and grow a viable economy tied to the future, and not burdened by complete fealty to the ways and thinking of the past. Encourage diversity for the sake of our state.
Does West Virginia have the money, the population, the influence to rescue ourselves from our abysmal economic and educational malaise by ourselves? Apparently not, because we haven’t done it. So, is it crazy to think we might want to be a welcoming place for people who have some new ideas, some new ways, some new hunger for success, that we may have lost or forgotten here?
Instead, we parrot the talk of states that have far more resources and attractions that we will never have if politicians keep erecting rhetorical walls that intimidate and repulse growth and progress.
We’re the only state to have lost population between 1950 and 2019. Seventy years! What we’re doing is not working. It may give us old people comfort to have everything exactly as it was. That’s the way to become a time-frozen theme park, but it’s not the way to develop a thriving economy, and to pay for the nice things that attract people to move to a state.
Simply to continue to survive, the state needs to get younger. Nothing we’re doing is attracting young people. Oh, we have wonderful pockets of progressive thought, where young people are willing to make a home and build their lives, but some of our officials are acting on the thoughts of a much more narrow-minded group whose ideas are repugnant to the young, educated people who would want to enjoy and enhance the beauty of West Virginia.
Being prepared to compete is not part of some imagined “woke virus.” It is simply part of being prepared.
Rejecting diversity, equity and inclusiveness is bad for our young people who leave, and it’s bad for all of our people who stay. There is nothing good about it. That philosophy is not from West Virginia, and it’s not going to help West Virginians. We can only get that prosperity we say we want by opening ourselves up to some new ways of thinking – ideas that might come from good neighbors who do not look like most of us, and who may worship or love differently from us.
Hicks is a lawyer, mediator, arbitrator and a native of Charleston’s West Side.