You Have to Be Taught to Hate and Fear

One of the best songs of all time is the song from South Pacific called “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.” It talks about how before you are six or seven or eight years old you have to be taught to hate people your family hates or to be afraid of people who are different from you. The idea behind the song is that children are not born hating and fearing others. They literally have to be taught. I was reminded of this last weekend when our dear friends came over with their two children.
Their oldest child is a four year old boy. He is as cute as a child could be and I have loved him since the day he was born. His mom has skin the color of soy milk and his dad has skin the color of dark chocolate. His mom was telling me that recently he pointed to Michelle Obama and said, “That’s you, Mama.” He also did the same thing with Shakira! She then went on to say that when he sees picture of men with very light skin, he seems to see his Daddy. She has been marveling at the fact that he does not seem to see any differences in their skin color. In other words, he doesn’t identify them by their skin color or even notice it for that matter. He easily sees his Dad in all other Dads and his mom in all other moms, regardless of skin color.
Our conversation quickly went to how sad it will be when someone tells him that his mom doesn’t look like Michelle Obama and his Dad doesn’t look like some of his friends’ dads. Will he feel the need eventually to decide which color of skin he prefers? Will he wonder about his own skin color and how his compares with other kids? My heart breaks to think that this beautiful little boy who does not know how to think about or categorize people in terms of skin color might some day be taught to fear or hate.
When parents do such an amazing job of teaching their children to love everyone, no matter what might be different, how can we continue that teaching? Schools often attempt to, but because there are always students who HAVE been taught to hate and fear, it seems it spreads like wildfire. In our church, we are intentional about trying to teach all of the children who come through our doors that differences are nothing to fear or hate. We talk about kids who have two moms or two dads and kids who are bigger or smaller and kids who have different color hair and kids who can sing or kids who are good at sports. As parents we have to choose church very carefully because there are many places where hate and fear are still alive and well and being taught to children, if not overtly than certainly covertly. We aren’t perfect here at Montclair but we are willing to learn from our mistakes and we are trying to teach Love and how to value our differences. We’d love to have you come and check us out. If you hear or see something you wonder about, let us know. We want to be a part of creating a whole new world for our children.