Letter: Heritage protest mindless, detestable

The headline reads: “Group to protest RBC Heritage.”

Predictably, a group founded by professional victim and full-time charlatan, Al Sharpton, and his local minions are the provocateurs behind the protest.

The stated goal is for the golfers to know “exactly what the locals are doing to the original people of these islands.”

Rather than highlighting Volunteers in Medicine, Second Helpings, Meals on Wheels, and the scores of volunteers cleaning up native islander cemeteries after the hurricane, the article gratuitously referred to descendants of “formerly enslaved West Africans” in an attempt to create the pretense of moral authority to the protestors’ claims.

In an attempt to create the image of Simon Legree, scalawags, and carpetbaggers, we hear of the “horrible injustice” that the descendants have lost so much land. Presumably, the selling of property motivated by profit to willing purchasers is a horrible injustice.

At the heart of the protest are the so-called “strict land-use rules” that prohibit native islanders from selling arts, crafts and food “off the road.” Presumably, the protestors envision a Lowcountry version of Nassau’s Straw Market along William Hilton Parkway.

Lastly, we hear the thinly-veiled accusation of genocide due to Hilton Head’s land-use policies with the warning that “the culture could be extinct in the future.”

The attempt to befoul the event that provides millions of dollars to the institutions that aid the very people that the protestors claim to represent is sickening, mindless and detestable.

This story was originally published March 14, 2017 at 1:05 PM with the headline "Letter: Heritage protest mindless, detestable."