Your summer will not be complete without a dolphin tour off Hilton Head. Take a 1.5 hour private excursion from Broad Creek into Calibogue Sound in the Intercoastal Waterway, which is home to the majority of dolphins near Hilton Head. Explore the coastal shores and marsh environment; while out also seeing highlights of our area such as the historic lighthouses. You will view local nature and wildlife and the main objective will be to educate you about the dolphins as get you close views of them.
This trip is great for anyone who wants the opportunity to be up close and personal with the beautiful dolphins and nature of Hilton Head. You don’t really experience the best part of Hilton Head until you have experienced the dolphins on the pristine waters around the island.
For more information click https://www.commanderzodiac.com/hilton-head-dolphin-watch/dolphins-and-more.html
By CDD Staff
HarbourFest at Shelter Cove Harbour & Marina on Hilton Head Island is a weekly celebration during the summer with live music and entertainment, arts and crafts, activities for children and Tuesday night fireworks. Bring the little ones out to see Cappy the Clown this Labor Day weekend — Saturday, September 5 and Sunday, September 6 from 6 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Please visit www.sheltercoveharbourfest.com for details and updates.
By CDD Staff
Celebrate America’s 250th anniversary with a hands-on blacksmithing experience unlike any other. At The Forge at Charleston Adventure Forest, you’ll step into the role of the blacksmith and hand forge your very own tomahawk to take home. This isn’t just a demonstration — it’s a chance to work with fire, steel, and traditional blacksmithing techniques to create a real piece of history with your own hands. Classes are held every Friday from 3:00–6:00 p.m. and every Saturday from 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Space is limited and reservations are required, so reserve your spot today. Click here to learn more about blacksmithing and other opportunities offered at Charleston Adventure Forest, including a zipline for the youngsters: CharlestonAdventureForest.com.
Forge your way into understanding history by creating your own keepsake at 1152 Guerins Bridge Rd. in Awendaw.
Attempting to eliminate every unequal outcome inevitably produces discrimination.
By Inez Feltscher Stephman
Dozens of “gap” statistics have become so deeply embedded in our political discourse that we hardly question whether unequal outcomes are actually evidence of discrimination. “Women make 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.” “Hispanic students make up a disproportionately small percentage of university graduates.” “Black women must work into the following July to catch up to what white men made the previous year.”
In our equity-obsessed age, each one of these “gap stats” has a grimy underbelly, made up of individuals who are unfairly denied the fruits of their talents because institutions have tried to force equal outcomes: men who work longer hours on average; Asians who have higher SAT scores on average; Millennial and Gen Z white applicants who get passed over at work because they don’t add to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
We are living through a decade of wokeism in which racial favoritism has graduated from an ostensibly temporary thumb on the scale for the almost-qualified to the kind of unqualified frenzy that attracts grifters and con artists. And, correspondingly, the discrimination against the disfavored has gone from ambient to so intense as to bar advancement in culturally prestigious industries. Contra to dismissive talking points from purveyors like AOC, Woke 1 has done real damage to many lives.
Think, for example, of the nameless crowd of people denied the sinecures, positions, and honors bestowed on Cambridge’s former “youngest black professor,” Jason Arday. He was a serial fabulist and plagiarist and tragically died by suicide earlier this month. In addition to the coveted position from which he resigned, Arday had a lucrative book deal in an industry in which just three of the 70 National Book Awards nominees in the past decade were white men, a shift that happened far too suddenly to have occurred naturally.
The Arday debacle shows that the quest to eliminate disparities has turned hiring into a de facto racial spoils system. Despite every remedy applied against them, disparities persist everywhere — in every profession, school, boardroom, prison, scientific award category, sports field, and socioeconomic tier for reasons that are cultural, political, family-based, genetic, religious, and natural.
Sometimes the reasons are even historically arcane. The majority of nail technicians in the United States are Vietnamese, even though they make up just 0.75 percent of the population. It turns out that this particular disparity can be traced to a single American actress, Tippi Hedren of The Birds fame. She visited a refugee camp near Sacramento after the Vietnam War and paid her manicurist to provide training, which then spread like wildfire throughout that community.
Disparities of a thousand hues are the norm. As Thomas Sowell wrote in Discriminations and Disparities back in 2018, “Neither in nature nor among human beings are either equal or randomly distributed outcomes automatic. On the contrary, grossly unequal distributions of outcomes are common, both in nature and among people.” Though no example exists anywhere of a world without disparities, it seems that most American institutions — government agencies, universities, and corporate workplaces — cannot tolerate the reality of their existence, even where there is no evidence that they arise from discriminatory practices.
University of San Diego School of Law professor Gail Heriot, an experienced civil rights lawyer and author of the aptly titled article “Title VII Disparate Impact Liability Makes Almost Everything Presumptively Illegal,” regularly challenges audiences to come up with a single hiring criterion that does not produce disparate outcomes on the basis of some protected characteristic — that is, race, sex, religion, or national origin. She’s never received a satisfactory answer, even after offering a cash reward.
The ubiquity of disparities allows government agencies to choose their victims at will. No government body tasked with enforcing laws against workplace discrimination has ever investigated whether requiring a bachelor’s degree for entry-level office work causes disparities among different demographic groups. Instead, the government seeks to root out all disparities against protected classes.
During the Biden administration, the EEOC sued the grocery store chain Sheetz for screening out potential employees with certain kinds of criminal records. The government admitted that Sheetz had no intention of discriminating against black and Native American job applicants. But because a higher percentage of job seekers from those backgrounds had criminal records, it had the effect of constituting illegal discrimination. Welcome to disparate impact liability, a branch of the law now declared dead for the time being — and potentially unconstitutional — by the Trump administration’s Office of Legal Counsel.
When the law presumes that these gaps exist because of discrimination, it places defendants in an impossible position: when the inevitable disparities appear in your organization, you can either accept them — and open yourself to litigation — or discriminate against unprotected classes to make the numbers even out — and open yourself to litigation.
As I testified before the House Oversight Committee in July, our universities, corporations, and public institutions have been “at war with the reality of disparities” for decades. In their effort to vanquish them, often under shapeshifting terms, they’ve turned to actual discrimination against “overrepresented” groups in a way that is both deeply unjust and illegal under U.S. law.
For too long, even those on the Right were defensive about the existence of these disparities. They went beyond the laudable goal of reforming the K-12 education system to make it function better for all students to promising that their reforms would “close the gaps” and selling them as a way to render affirmative action at the university level unnecessary.
By CDD Staff
Come to the Beaufort Book Store on Aug. 29 from 4-6 p.m. to hear from Dr. Catherine Pipas as she discusses her book, A Doctor’s Dozen: Twelve Strategies for Personal Health and a Culture of Wellness.
This valuable resource from Dr. Pipas delves into burnout in the medical community and relates 12 lessons and strategies for improved health that she has learned from patients, students and colleagues during her 20 years working as a family physician. Each lesson includes resources for bringing them into practice and a “health challenge.”
This is a free event, with books available for signing and purchase. Drinks and light snacks provided by Beaufort Bookstore at 2127 Boundary St. in Beaufort.
CDD Staff
The young and fun — and those who think they still are — concert crowd wants to know: How cool can you get? Answer that question by deciding if you will take the “Goo Goo Challenge.” Will you be going to hear the Goo Goo Dolls? The Neon Trees will open for the Dolls who will be playing this Saturday at the Credit One Stadium on Daniel Island. The gates open at 6:30 p.m. and the show begins at 7:30 p.m.
Find out more details about the concert by clicking here: https://creditonestadium.com/event/goo-goo-dolls-summer-2026-tour/.
Get your tickets by clicking here: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/2D006382A8F9B004.
By CDD Staff
In addition to operating as an event venue, historic Kersey House in downtown Summerville has a lunch, tea, brunch and supper menu. “Mercy of the Chef” events may also tempt you. This space is relatively new, opening Feb. 2025.
Check out all the options or make a reservation by clicking here: https://www.kerseyhousesummerville.com/diningwithus.
Find them at 117 W. Luke Ave. in Summerville.
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