As we move into 2017, there is a great deal of racial animosity bubbling no longer beneath the surface. When so many speak of "America" and "Americans," or speak of the "real America" and "real Americans," mean only the parts of the country and those people who are just like them--white, native-born, mainly protestant. For now they tolerate Jews and catholics, and few model minorities. How long with even that tolerance last once those real Americans feel secure in their counter-revolution, taking America back to pre-Brown v. Board of Education, pre-Roe v. Wade, pre-Fourteenth- and Fifteenth Amendments? Americans dislike being called racist, so let us just acknowledge that Americans are not good on race. We must learn how to teach the next generation of Americans to be, if not good on race, at least a little better on race. No one is born a racist. No one is born bad on race. One has to be taught to think, talk and act in racial terms.
"EMILE: What makes her [that is, Nellie] talk like that? Why do you have this feeling, you and she? I do not believe it is born in you. I do not believe it.
CABLE: It's not born in you! It happens after you're born . . . (CABLE sings the following words, as if figuring this whole question out for the first time.)
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 you dear little ear--
You've got to be carefully taught!
You've got to taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly shaped,
And people whose son is a different 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!
You've got to be carefully taught!"
From Richard Rodgers (Music), Oscar Hammerstein II (Lyrics), and Oscar Hammerstein I & Joshua Logan (Book), South Pacific: A Musical Play, reprinted in Laurence Maslon, ed., American Musicals 1927-1949: The Complete Books and Lyrics of Eight Broadway Classics (New York: Library of America, 2014), at 521, 590-591.
