Kathleen Z.
Minneapolis, MN
I enjoyed your talk at the Guthrie so much. I listened to it again yesterday and was disappointed the man from Birmingham who was at the church explosion didn’t get on the edited broadcast! Here are my six words from SOUTH PACIFIC:
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
Here are the rest:
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!
I was fortunate to grow up in a home (born in 1940) in St. Paul where we were NOT taught to hate. Maybe it had something to do with all my German grandparents who may have experienced prejudice against them during the war. I have a friend who wasn’t so fortunate. Her parents were Japanese and they were “corralled” during the war. I guess they didn’t look enough like “us” as the Germans did…
