Melissa Harris-Lacewell: You've Got to Be Carefully Taught

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/article/youve-got-be-carefully-taught

You've Got to Be Carefully Taught
Melissa Harris-Lacewell
June 9, 2010 | This article appeared in the June 28, 2010 edition of The Nation.


I spent Memorial Day in New Orleans, where I watched a group of citizens lay a wreath at the foot of a statue of Jefferson Davis. It was a jarring reminder of how the South understands American history. Memorial Day was founded after the Civil War to honor Union soldiers. When Southerners choose to memorialize Confederate leaders, it is an act of subversive historical revision and an indication of the unresolved political and cultural anxieties that stir just below the surface of the "New South."

The white New Orleanians paying their respects to Davis made me nervous. Few things disgusted Confederates more than property-owning women, free blacks and evidence of miscegenation. I am all of these, so I feel the very legitimacy of my citizenship is challenged by their nostalgia. But I noticed that those gathered at the monument appeared to be mostly senior citizens. In contrast, young New Orleanians were hanging out in integrated groups in the park, listening to music, drinking beer and worrying about how the impending hurricane season would affect the BP oil disaster.

The generational divide in how these Southerners spent Memorial Day was jarring and instructive. In May, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill cutting state funding to schools that offer classes "designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group" or "advocating ethnic solidarity." The law aims to ban ethnic studies curriculums and implies that classes in African-American history or Latino literature are dangerous and discriminatory. Then the Texas State Board of Education voted to introduce a considerably more conservative slant to the social studies curriculum. In the revised Texas version of history, there is an increased emphasis on Phyllis Schlafly, segregationist George Wallace and the National Rifle Association, while the United Nations is presented as an enemy of American sovereignty and the separation of church and state is reduced to an ideological suggestion rather than a constitutional mandate.

The celebration of Confederate traitors as American heroes, the whitewash of school curriculums and the conservative reinterpretation of national history are weapons in America's decades-long culture war. These policies reflect an impulse similar to the Cultural Revolution of Communist China: an attempt to gain authority by controlling the very definitions of truth available to young people. After all, it is among young Americans that conservatives are losing this war, and if they are serious about taking back their country, the education of American youth is the critical terrain where they plan to make a stand.

snip//

Social conservatives shudder with apocalyptic anxiety about these generational trends. They understand that the best defense against this frightening, changing world is to wrest control of the historical narrative. To retake the country, they must first reshape young people's reality by revising the meaning of their daily lives. They must make traitors into heroes, erase the contributions of marginal groups, decry self-knowledge as sedition and reinforce fear of those who are different. I'm reminded of the lyrics of a song in South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein's controversial 1949 musical: "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." Arizona and Texas policy-makers seem to be using the lyrics as a guide to curriculum development, but they may find that the world has already moved beyond their fearful grasp.

[dipsydoodle]

1. to Be Carefully Taught ?

split infinitive ? :shrug:

[Dogmudgeon]

2. The title is the name of a show tune from *South Pacific*

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught

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!

(Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein)

[supernova]

3. Sometimes it gets cut

It's an aspect of the play that really troubles people.

I wish they would leave it in more often.

[dipsydoodle]

4. Blimey

I'd forgotten that ! I've got a good memory but methinks yours may be even better. Yes - John Kerr sung it in the film which I saw back in the early '60s.

[LaurenG]

5. I was really little when the soundtrack was bought by my dad

on vinyl. He let each of us pick a record at night when we were going to bed. (I could hear the stereo from my bed). I always picked South Pacific. Your post took me way back didn't it. :) Thanks for inspiring the memory.

edit spelling error

[loudsue]

6. I live in the south, (NC) and grew up in Texas. There is a lot of truth

to what Ms. Harris-Lacewell says. I have often thought about how much better off this world will be when all of those who lived through the civil rights era are finally gone, and when nobody living remembers segregation. However, there are many in the south trying to keep those horrible prejudices alive in their kids, actively teaching them to hate and mistrust anyone with skin even one shade darker than theirs. The revisionists took over the school board in the county where the capitol city of N.C. (Raleigh) is, and they are going back to "neighborhood schools" for the county.

These republican revisionists are like roaches. Well-funded roaches, and they keep coming out of the woodwork. The NRA and the churches have enough money to keep financing them for a very long time. Most churches in the south are preaching the republican mantras every election. Abortion, gays, etc. These organizations have been supplemented by the military/industrial complex, which owns the media, and which is just itching to create more wars...which bring them more money. Wars are traditionally a republican wet dream.

It seems these creeps are getting more & more powerful under the democratic white house and legislature.

[The Wizard]

7. It's time to finally end reconstruction.

The Confederacy has been living off the tax dollars of Democratic tax paying states for far too long. Let them stew in their own bigoted juices.

[Solly Mack]

8. k/r