Hello everyone.
Here is the Eleventh Reflection from my church E-news. This was a very hard one to write. I felt, however, it was necessary in this climate.
The picture is from a program I did with Sita several years ago for my sister’s church in St. Louis at a preschool here. These children diligently saved their dimes and nickels and donated over 200 dollars to Circle Tail, the agency that rescued Sita from a Kill shelter and trained her to be a service dog. These children are our future indeed!
Jane’s Eleventh Reflection
YOU’VE GOT TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT
Amid the horrible racial tensions tearing at the fabric of our country, I remember a story from my teens I have never forgotten.
It was in the ’60s. A sheriff’s deputy would visit schools and libraries to conduct programs, and encourage better relationships with the police in the community. He talked about the experience of accompanying a group of elementary school children to a zoo. They were challenged with getting the children home safely. Then the unthinkable happened. One of the children went missing. The deputies got a description of the missing child and scoured the park. They couldn’t find the lost boy and were panicking as the park was closing. The zoo began emptying and a child called out, “There he is!” Not one of the children had mentioned the missing child was black. The deputy used this example of innocent children not looking at race.
This reminds me of a song inserted into the musical South Pacific” You’ve got to be carefully taught.” Just think about these lyrics.
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 six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught
Oscar Hammerstein was known to be controversial, and it was believed he did this deliberately to demonstrate hatred and bias. This song is sung after the character says “Racism is not born in you! It happens after you’re born.” The show went on Broadway in 1949.
What is bone-chilling is that this song is still relevant today. I do not want to make the entire race relations problem sound simplistic, because it is complicated on every level including social, economic, medical, and personal. What I believe is that bias is taught and is not inherent in children.
We need to be teaching our children from birth that many of us are similar. We have parent(s) and siblings, and children, and grandchildren, and friends who love us. We feel emotions. We all bleed and mean words are hurtful to every one of us.
We are different too. We have our religions, culture, and beliefs. We have different skin colors. We may have visible disabilities such as a wheelchair or prosthesis. We may love the same gender, a different gender, or be transgender. This is what makes the world an exciting place to live. We need to teach children not to be afraid but to understand these differences.
Children need to learn history too. Governor Mike DeWine said that “Slavery is the original sin of our country.” We need to explain that black and brown people are justifiably angry because they were taken from another country and brought here forced to be slaves. They had no choice and have been treated poorly since. This helps children to understand the anger and the protests. And we begin to teach this to preschoolers. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 19:14 (ESV)
We also need to educate ourselves as adults. We did not carefully teach these principles throughout history and lyrics that were sung in 1949 are unfortunately still relevant in 2020. This was 70 years ago. Do we still want this song to be relevant in 2090 – 70 years from now? We need to be teaching our children and learning ourselves about bias to prevent it from happening in the future.