Hilton Head’s ‘disappointed’ arts leaders ask Town Council to pass cultural plan again
More than two dozen arts and cultural leaders on Hilton Head Island have signed a letter urging the Town Council to quickly revisit a contentious vote that has led to allegations of racism and a “power grab.”
The letter, which is dated Oct. 17, has circulated on Facebook in recent days and has been signed by Jeffrey Reeves, president and CEO of the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina; Jane Joseph, chair of the island’s Arts Council; Ahmad Ward, executive director of the Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park; and Alan Jordan, president and CEO of the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, among others.
The leaders have asked the Town Council to “swiftly” reapprove a strategic plan for the town’s Office of Cultural Affairs. The council in September voted 6-0-1 in favor of the plan, but in a highly unusual move rescinded that prior approval in a 5-2 vote on Oct. 5.
The letter is one of the latest twists in a fast-moving public debate about racism and diversity training that exploded into view at the beginning of the month.
Since The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette published an article about the Oct. 5 vote, the mayor has openly rebuked a fellow council member; a local advocacy group has pushed the town to reapprove the plan; and the community has learned more about why the Town Council rescinded its prior approval of the document, which is a general guide for the town’s relationship with arts and cultural organizations.
Ward 4 representative Tamara Becker, who previously would not support the plan without additional information about it, on Monday said she recently received a three-hour video of an Office of Cultural Affairs training that was “nothing more than critical race theory.”
The video shows an equity, diversity and inclusion training that the office held for Hilton Head arts and cultural professionals in March, Becker said in an interview. (The Office of Cultural Affairs’ strategic plan says it will offer to host diversity training sessions for arts and cultural organizations.)
The March training, Becker said, included a discussion on systemic racism and white supremacy, during which people used “horrendous language to suggest that the white population in this town and across the country ... is unworthy and must be broken down.”
Arts and cultural leaders who signed the Oct. 17 letter had a different take.
“Diversity training is often challenging and uncomfortable,” the letter reads. “It’s purposeful and meant to grow the understanding of your bias and how you serve your employees, people and organization.
“Those of us who attended the March 2021 class felt that the introductory material was outstanding and set the stage for more specific ‘how to’ classes and materials.”
The training was “very well received,” Director of Cultural Affairs Jennifer McEwen said in July.
The newspapers have filed a public records request for the video that Becker referenced.
What’s going on?
At a July committee meeting, Becker said she had questions about an “educational component” of the Office of Cultural Affairs plan, along with the “education, diversity and inclusion policy, and training materials” referenced in the plan.
“My request,” Becker said at the time, “is that we have an outline and we see ... what that educational program and those workshops entail, who’s presenting them and such, before they’re implemented.”
Before the Oct. 5 vote, Becker still was not satisfied with the plan’s level of detail on “curriculum” and workshops.
“I want to know what it is that I’m approving,” Becker said.
In an interview after the meeting, Ward 1 representative Alex Brown argued that the 5-2 vote clearly was centered on some council members’ discomfort regarding topics of inclusion.
“What I heard from ... the council last night is, ‘We don’t want to go anywhere because it’s uncomfortable. Not because we want to see the curriculum,’” Brown said.
“It’s a power grab,” Brown added. “It’s not borderline racism. It is racism.”
He continued: “We all ... got our different biases. We all should be trying on a daily basis to understand one another and treat each other equally. And none of us succeed in that. We all fall short on that. ... When it comes to us that are elected, though, we cannot get in our own way on stuff like this. There’s too much at stake when it comes to the world. This is why we get into wars, right? Because we don’t have the opportunity to have discussions about our biases. And here we are at the local level, trying to control that.”
Becker in a previous interview said she was “flabbergasted” by Brown’s statement on racism.
“I think that’s an outrageous comment to make with no basis,” Becker said.
David Ames, of Ward 3, voted with Brown to maintain the plan’s approval. Bill Harkins, of Ward 2; Tom Lennox, of Ward 5; Glenn Stanford, of Ward 6; and Mayor John McCann, meanwhile, joined Becker in voting to rescind the prior 6-0-1 approval of the plan until its “educational curriculum” is fully identified and reviewed by the Town Council.
Lennox in a previous interview said Becker had requested additional information about the plan and had not received it, “so we thought the best way to deal with it would be (to) bring the plan back to council, get the information, review it, discuss it and then reconsider the plan.”
The issue came to a head Monday after a few residents criticized Becker during a Town Council committee meeting, in which Becker said the Office of Cultural Affairs’ training in March included critical race theory.
Critical race theory, or CRT, is “not a diversity and inclusion ‘training’ but a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship,” according to an article published in the American Bar Association’s Human Rights Magazine.
CRT is a “collection of ideas about systemic bias and privilege,” and some conservative lawmakers in several states want to ban it in schools, according to PolitiFact.
What’s next?
McCann, meanwhile, has indicated that the council will revisit the Office of Cultural Affairs plan at an early November meeting.
“It is my intention that pieces of that document that we’re all not happy with, or some of us are not happy with, will be discussed and voted upon at that time,” McCann said at a Thursday workshop.
McCann also has publicly chastised Brown for his comments to the newspapers.
“I think it’s very inappropriate for any council member to accuse the council or individual members of the council of racism,” he said at last Tuesday’s council meeting. “I mean, the word is bad. The word is misunderstood.”
The mayor’s remarks came after arts and cultural leaders and the Coalition of Island Neighbors, or COIN, an advocacy group, both penned letters urging the Town Council to reapprove the plan.
The decision to rescind the plan “puts this vital economic engine at risk and undermines the unique desirable collaboration between our arts and cultural organizations and the Town,” reads the COIN letter, which is dated Oct. 10.
The arts and cultural leaders, meanwhile, wrote that they were disappointed in the council’s vote. Many funding organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts, the letter says, require that grant applicants provide a statement on equity, diversion and inclusion training, or EDI.
“Our Island arts and cultural organizations (previously) requested EDI training to help us to build our own plans around EDI and therefore be candidates for grants which are crucial to our viability,” the letter says.
“We believe that removing the EDI mission actions from the (Office of Cultural Affairs’) strategic plan would put our arts and cultural organizations as well as our community at a great disadvantage.”
