"You've Got To Be Carefully Taught"

So sue me; I'd never listened to the lyrics before. Some issues we'll always be dealing with it seems, or maybe not.

"You've Got To Be Carefully Taught"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You\'ve_Got_to_Be_Carefull...


"You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" -written in 1949 by Rogers and Hammerstein


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.<1> Sung by the character Lieutenant Cable, the song is preceded by a lyric saying racism is "not born in you! It happens after you’re born..."

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 different shade
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught
Before it's too late
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8
To hate all the people
your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught

Rodgers and Hammerstein risked the entire South Pacific venture in light of legislative challenges to its decency or supposed Communist agenda. While on a tour of the Southern United States, lawmakers in Georgia introduced a bill outlawing entertainment containing "an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow."<2> One legislator said that "a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life."<3> 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."<4>

...and especially that song!

(...and "Some Enchanted Evening"... and "Wash that Man Right Outta My Hair"... oh, and "Bali Hai"... oh hell, I love that movie!)

cancelled because R&H felt so strongly about this song, so long ago!

Thanks for the info! I've always loved the musical, and now that song will have more meaning every time I watch it.

I also wanted to say how much I also love "There is Nothing Like a Dame" ("nothing in the woooooooorld!") but I didn't because it could be interpreted as sexist, and in this climate... well. And I'm a woman! It was a different time...

It's playing New York right now, get out there and see it, you will not be dissapointed.

not so easy to get. Have you seen it? Is that the show Patty LuPone (sp?) is in now?

That's _Gypsy_

I watched some awards show last night-Emmys?-and saw her, though they did also do some tunes from South Pacific.

these crafty little fellow traveler commies are everywhere. :rofl:

I thought it was advocating teaching "to hate and be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made and people whose skin is a different shade." Maybe my mother explained it to me. She is the one who taught me we are all the same under our skin.

off topic, but Rogers and Hammerstein did so much to enrich America's collective unconscious.

From the movie, when I was a kid. It's true. I'm white. Lived my first 11 years on the upper west side of Manhattan. I was too young to pick up on the subtler signs of discrimination and no one I knew taught bigotry. I never heard anyone referred to or saw anyone treated in a way that I could recognize as a lack of respect due to ethnicity. I did not learn any racial epithets at all. The area was very diverse and I got to know people as individuals without giving much thought to differences. Or rather, differences were just interesting and not considered a problem. I used to get coloring books and I'd color some of the kids dark brown. I knew they didn't look quite right. They all had these Caucasian features, but a world where any group of kids were all white wasn't a world I was familiar with. When the issue of segregation came up in current events in the fifties I asked my mother what it meant. She just told that some people thought that people of different races shouldn't go to school together, since schools were the issues that were making the news. I completely misunderstood and assumed that this was a new idea that some crazy people had.

The only racial thought I remember having was that Negro (the right word at the time) girls my age had a lot to put up with because their mothers put their hair in multiple, tight pigtails. I considered just two pigtails to be a form of torture. That was pretty much it, though. Boy, was I suprised a few years later when I started to find out about racism and bigotry of all types. It was way too late to learn to think that way by then.

When I finally really listened to it, I understood why.

It's pretty brilliant, really.