You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught

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In 2014, National Public Radio ran a series of conversations about The Race Card Project, where thousands of people have submitted their thoughts on race and cultural identity in six words.  On 

May 19 that year, NPR Host Michele Norris ran a story about a song from South Pacific:[1]

"You've Got to Be Carefully Taught". Those six words form the title of a song from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's South Pacific, the wildly popular musical revolving around cross-cultural love affairs in the South Pacific during World War II.

The musical South Pacific, which opened on Broadway in 1949, won several Tony Awards the following year. Then, years later, it became a hit movie.

To say South Pacific was successful would be an understatement — it was a blockbuster. But it also drew critics and controversy. It covered uncomfortable territory. Its romantic tension was based on interracial romance, a strong taboo at the time.

Even so, the soundtrack topped the charts. Songs like "Some Enchanted Evening" and "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" were in heavy rotation on the radio and on record players around the country.

And judging from the inbox at The Race Card Project, the message behind the song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" has resonated with those who love the South Pacific soundtrack, like Kathleen Ziegler of Lino Lakes, Minn. She says she first heard that song on her family's record player.

"I had three older sisters," she says. "We used to put the records on a lot, as we were cleaning, especially. And we'd have it turned way up and we learned all the songs."

The sisters would sing together, Ziegler says, and the lyrics to "You've Got to Be Taught" stay with her, even today.

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.[2]

"I just remember hearing [the lyrics] when I was young, and it made me very sad," Ziegler says. "I had parents who did exceptionally love us and taught us to do the same. And I just thought, how can people be taught to hate, especially children?"

In 1958, Hammerstein was [interviewed] by Mike Wallace. "South Pacific had two love stories in it," Hammerstein told Wallace. "They both concern, in a different way, race prejudice."

One of the love stories involves a plucky American woman named Nellie Forbush.

"Nellie Forbush, the Navy nurse, is in love with a Frenchman, and when she finds out that he was once married to a Polynesian woman and has two Polynesian — no, half-Polynesian — children, she runs away," he explained.

"She's shocked by it, and she's awakened later when she fears he's dead, and then suddenly she realizes how unimportant was her prejudice, how important it was that she loved him and how much she wants him back, no matter what kind of children he has," he said.

"What we were saying was that ... all this prejudice that we have is something that fades away in the face of something that's really important," Hammerstein told Wallace.

Nearly 70 years ago, Hammerstein's message of tolerance was largely about race and romance. But on so many levels — race, sexual orientation, class, religion, gender — the challenge of reaching across differences is still relevant today.

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[1] For full story, see http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/308296815/six-words-youve-got-to-be-taught-intolerance

[2] For the full lyrics of the song, see https://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/southpacific/youvegottobecarefullytaught.htm