You Got To Be Carefully Taught.

Who knows where that line came from?

Hint it is from a well know musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

In the musical South Pacific there is a song that I like and I use it is in some of my trainings it is…

And the lyrics to "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" are,

Cable - You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its 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
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade
You've got to
Be carefuly
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
Emile De Beque -
This is just the kind of ugliness I was running away from
It has followed my all this way
All these years
And now it has found me
I was cheated before
And i'm cheated again
By a mean little world
Full of mean little men
And the one chance for me
Is this life I know best
To be here on an island
And to hell with
The rest
I'll cling
To this island
Like a tree or a stone
I'll cling to this island and be free
And
Alone

You have to remember that the play was written in 1949 and what was going on here in the US?

The History Channel said…

The Red Scare was hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, which intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

And OutHistroy said…

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government
Most America’s know the story of Senator Joseph McCarthy and how he set off a “red scare” when he famously charged in 1950 that the US State Department and other government agencies had been infiltrated by communist agents. But few Americans know that McCarthy also charged that the government had been infiltrated by homosexuals, and that they posed a threat equally as grave to national security. This fear that gay men and lesbians could be blackmailed into revealing state secrets resulted in a systematic campaign to identify and remove all government employees suspected of homosexuality. In this book, David Johnson argues that a parallel “lavender scare” permeated American cold war culture. But it also helped launch a new civil rights struggle.

But that was not all that was happening in the late forties and early fifties, once again the History Channel…

The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for Black Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the United States.

And into that conservative brouhaha came this song in a musical...

I was talking about the play to a friend and discussing hate when I played this song for her, she started looking up Songfacts but nothing came up but what did come up in the Songfact search was Wikipedia…

South Pacific received scrutiny for its commentary regarding relationships between different races and ethnic groups. In particular, "You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught" was subject to widespread criticism, judged by some to be too controversial or downright inappropriate for the musical stage. Sung by the character Lieutenant Cable, the song is preceded by a line saying racism is "not born in you! It happens after you’re born..."

Rodgers and Hammerstein risked the entire South Pacific venture in light of legislative challenges to its decency or supposed Communist agenda. While the show was on a tour of the Southern United States, lawmakers in Georgia introduced a bill outlawing entertainment containing "an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow." One legislator said that "a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life." Rodgers and Hammerstein defended their work strongly. James Michener, upon whose stories South Pacific was based, recalled, "The authors replied stubbornly that this number represented why they had wanted to do this play, and that even if it meant the failure of the production, it was going to stay in."

We tend to think that the attacks by conservatives on Blacks, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants is something new but it has been going on for decades, it is a tried and true method for Republicans to get votes… stir up hate.

Into this mix comes a song from a musical that won Tonys in… Best Musical, Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical, Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical , Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical, est Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical, Best Producer, Best Director, Best Libretto, Best Original Score, and Best Scenic Design.

James Taylor on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show played You've Got to Be Carefully Taught…

Iconic singer-songwriter James Taylor served as the musical guest on Tuesday night’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The appearance came on the same day Taylor’s 2020 standards album, American Standard, was announced as a nominee for “Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album” at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2021.

For his appearance on Kimmel, James Taylor opted for “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”, the Rodgers and Hammerstein number from the 1949 musical, South Pacific. A timely selection for this strangest of years, “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” examines the process by which people are taught to be intolerant.

Though the song itself plays like a lovely ballad, rendered beautifully by Taylor (vocals/acoustic guitar) and some tasteful string accompaniment, the lyrics serve as a stinging, tongue-in-cheek reminder that hate and prejudice get passed down through generations (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 it is still being taught.