When I was young, my mother loved to listen to Broadway musical recordings. She purchased and cared for her vinyl records, and we listened to them again and again. One musical South Pacific (by Rodgers and Hammerstein, 1958) was set on a South Pacific island, and one of its songs has come to mind a lot in recent weeks. You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught has a quiet lullaby sound, but its words tell a sharp-edged story of the hatred and distrust European settlers had towards the South Pacific Islander natives.
Rodgers and Hammerstein were intentionally revealing the effects of racism, and the ways hatred is carried into next generations. They knew this problem was not one only of far off places, but was across the United States. Here are some of the words:
You’ve got to be taught, To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught, From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed, In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid,
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
This song came to mind because of the attacks on people whose skin is not “white” in several American places. These acts of hatred seem to ask to continue validating hatred. Sadly, a family that works to raise children to live in acceptance of others and to know that “all people are created equal” may see their child swayed by others who “teach hate” or that hatred is “just natural” or “is okay as it’s part of our history.”
How do we respond? How can we unteach “being carefully taught to be afraid”? How can we “unteach” being taught to hate and despise? One way that comes to mind is speaking up, as families, schools, communities, churches, organizations, and individuals.
We know when we hear words of discrimination, and we can find something simple to say, something like, “I disagree,” or “that’s not how I was raised,” or “that isn’t our way.”
More is needed, of course. But speaking up in the face of hatred is necessary to all other efforts to “unteach” hate and decrease acts of violence. The challenge is to let our words come gently, yet with the force of certainty that hate and acts of hate should not be part of America’s future.
We must find ways, all of us, to carefully “unteach” the hate that has so subtly yet systematically been taught. Our young people depend on us to begin to change what has been customary for too long.
Kristin Garey
Hovland
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