One Small Step with WYSO brings strangers with different beliefs together for a conversation — not to debate politics, but to simply get to know each other.
Martha Antolik of Vandalia and Venita Kelley of Dayton met at the Dayton Metro Library’s New Lebanon Branch to discuss their values around equality and inclusion. Both were Girl Scouts who grew up in the suburbs, but their experiences with race were very different. As a Girl Scout, Kelley was called a racial slur by an adult. Antolik opened the conversation by reading from Kelley’s biography.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Antolik: [Venita] "participated in conservation clubs as a child. I was a Girl Scout and learned my first lessons in inclusiveness and racial exclusion from adults who ran the program." Well, it seems like we have a number of things in common. I was also a Girl Scout. I will never know what that kind of racial exclusion feels like myself.
Kelley: Has anyone ever called you out of your name? Used your whiteness against you?
Antolik: Maybe once a long time ago when I was a kid.
Kelley: Okay. Was that a not-safe situation for you at that point? Were you by yourself?
Antolik: No, it wasn't that it was unsafe. I was around other kids. We were all kids. But it was just very confusing to me. I had never experienced it before, so I didn't know how to react. I grew up in the suburbs, so I was pretty protected.
Kelley: It's interesting because I was a suburban kid, too. We were both protected and unprotected in those moments. For me, I'm going up against some adult who thinks I'm somewhere where I'm not supposed to be. There was a whole social dynamic happening around a child of seven or 10 or however old we were, me and my best friend when we were growing up. It's interesting because I knew what to say back to that person who called me out of my name and then castigated her for walking with an "etc." And I was the one who responded. We were brave kids, I guess you could say, to speak back to an adult. This person had stepped out of respect for children and had done what he did and so I said "that's because she likes them" — and I said the word — "that's why." And she was right beside me and we were tough girls together, you know, running and jumping. And she said "Yea!" And that was all we needed as children to do, to keep walking, we never stopped walking, we never engaged with the adult past that. But it was a moment where there was an affirmation between us, we had given each other permission to not be as respectful to an adult because that adult had broken that respect. But I do really hope that there is a wave of people waking up and going "wait a minute, we have these values as a country and we are going to live them." Because there are generations of young people behind us who deserve to have the ability to live the lives they envision for themselves. That's my hope for the future.
Antolik: My personal values are that every single one of us should be judged by what we do, how we conduct ourselves, how we treat other people, what we say, meaning if we tell the truth or if we make stuff up. Not other factors about us that we can't change. I feel very strongly about that. I feel that if we talk about freedom for all, all means all. It doesn't mean all but minus this other group. Freedom and liberty for all means all, period, full stop.
Kelley: And you've been able to live your life by those values?
Antolik: I try.
One Small Step with WYSO is produced by the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO. This series is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and presented by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.
