Race: who taught you to hate?

“End racism.”

We hear the cry daily, but how? Where does racism begin? We are not born with it. Are we?

“South Pacific,” a 1949 musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, was one of the first to explore racial prejudice.

Set during World War II, the plot concerns a U.S. Navy nurse, Nellie Forbush, who falls for middle-aged French plantation owner Emile De Becque, on a South Pacific island (actually Hawaii’s Kauai).

But Nellie is from Arkansas and she recoils when she learns Emile has two mixed-race children.

Another character, an American Marine, is similarly trapped. He is in love with a Tonkinese girl he knows he can never bring home to the Main Line, where he lives. He sings the unforgettable song, “You’ve got to be carefully taught” to hate.

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.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late

Before you are six or seven or eight

To hate all the people your relatives hate

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

And that song brings me to a video posted on the Facebook page of African-American actress Viola Davis, and elsewhere.

In it, a father asks his son questions about four sets of children playing, each black and white. The son, about 5, never mentions skin color, even when his father prompts him to look for differences. 

I noticed the same when my children were very young, just starting school at the predominantly black Mann Elementary school at 53rd & Berks. After we moved from all-white Balwynne Park into integrated Wynnefield in 1969, they were transferred to the integrated Samuel Gompers school, 57th & Wynnefield.

We moved into Wynnefield to take advantage of the white flight that depressed real estate prices. I had no money, but with a no-interest loan from my parents, was able to buy a stone, 10-room house for less than 30K.

The block was integrated and my children played with black children and white children.

When I was first learning the kids’ names, I asked my kids who was who. Terry was the girl with the big smile. Queenie was the girl with the laugh. Paul had red hair. No child was ever identified by skin color. When my kids were even younger and played in the playground of our housing project, none of the kids — white, black, Hispanic — ever made reference to color.

I don’t think that is conclusive, but — OK. Let’s say the song from “South Pacific” is right. You have to be taught to hate,

Who does the teaching?

My children’s mother and I successfully inculcated in our children a spirit of openness to everyone that was planted in us by our Jewish (liberal) parents. I am not saying anyone  used these very words, but here was the message: Jews, among all people, know about being the “outsider,” the minority who is ostracized,  beaten or murdered. We must never allow this to happen to anyone else.

I know my children haven’t been infected by the virus of racism, which still exists, but is diminishing.

I believe babies are not conscious of race. If they are conscious of race by 5, then the culprits are largely parents — or the culture.

But our culture — music, TV, film, sports — is generally pro black, but in being pro, it admits differences between races. 

My feeling is you can be conscious of race, as you might be of height and weight, without it having any more meaning than hair color.

Whether kids are race conscious or not, they can and should be guided by parents toward an understanding that it just should not matter. And if parents don’t do it, friends should.

And that, among other things, is what the protesters are doing and maybe that is how we help to end racism. 

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