Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Anthem Against Racism
Panned by the critics, people still sing You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught
This year shocked our whole nation like a defibrillator on a cardiac patient. Our economy and way of life drastically changed and previously tolerated attitudes shattered. The rise of the Black Lives Movement seeks to bring an ultimate end to race-based discrimination. Many may not know that there is a theme song against racial prejudice, hate and fear; people have sung it since its debut a few years after the end of World War II. It is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.
Known for their Broadway productions including Oklahoma and the Sound of Music, Rodgers and Hammerstein presented South Pacific to the post-war Broadway audience in 1949. Based on James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, the musical was so well received the pair won a Pulitzer Prize.
Featuring famous tunes such as Bali Hai and Some Enchanted Evening, the list includes the song which many critics considered musically forgettable: You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.
Navy Lieutenant Cable sings the tune while struggling with anxiety. He anticipates the resistance he will receive when he brings the Polynesian woman he wants to marry back to the states. The fruit of this apprehension is the song where he recognizes that hate, prejudice and fear have to be taught. The message is ironic. These attitudes are not innate. Therefore, the actual message is children learn destructive racial stereotypes and attitudes from adults.
Famously referenced since 1949
Although Hammerstein, in union with Richard Rodgers, created many tunes for their Broadway and movie productions, you will find a host of references from 1949 to the present citing this one number. It may be their most controversial — a word one normally does not usually connect with the names Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Prior to opening night, the team received much resistance on the song encouraging them to cut it from the production. They refused. Reviewer Sigmund Spaeth writing in the Oakland (CA) Tribune in 1955 said that South Pacific was one of the greatest musical shows of all time despite the fact that You’ve Got to Be Taught should have been dropped from the beginning of its run. (p. 18-A Sept 4, 1955)
The song, he claims, could have been replaced by a few lines of dialog.
Nineteen years later almost to the day and writing for the Lowell (MA) Sun, Alice Regensburg described it as: “The unofficial theme of people everywhere who are fighting to abolish segregation and prejudice of all kinds.” (P. 12 Sept 8, 1974)
Andrea Most in 2000, as assistant professor of the department of English at the University of Toronto, wrote that the song and musical in 1953 inspired legislators in Georgia to introduce a bill outlawing any philosophy inspired by Moscow. They considered the play to be pro-communist propaganda. Keep in mind that it ran in Atlanta that year during the early days of what became known as the Red Scare. People were afraid that communists were infiltrating American institutions including and especially the entertainment industry.
David C Jones, she adds, one of those legislators, expressed concern about the focus on mixed-race marriages which he opposed. (Most, Andrea, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”: The Politics of Race in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, Theatre Journal 52, Number 3, October 2000 p. 308)
Jones in 1957 introduced legislation that would pay black or white families seeking integrated education to leave their segregated public schools in Georgia and attend integrated schools — in another state. (Students Who Want Mixed Schools May Get State Pay, Thomasville Times-Enterprise, February 5, 1957 P. 4)
Quoted in speeches, advertising, columns, letters and more
The song has a history that continues today. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, Hammerstein’s lyrics popped up in advertising against racial discrimination, columns, letters to the editor, speeches and more. Over and over again this song became a powerful message for the turbulent days of fighting for civil rights.
It became the theme song for National Brotherhood Week one year.
Robert Goulet in 1989 described the song and the production in which he played French Painter Emile DeBecque as a courageous act by Rogers and Hammerstein in 1949. “But it still has meaning today, not only in this country but all over the world.” (“Robert Goulet”, The Daily Texan February 28, 1989; p.15)
Robert Robeson, a columnist in the Long Beach Press-Telegram in 1972, used the words in reference to a difficult lesson his sons had to learn. They were playing in an abandoned amusement park and some similarly aged black boys were there as well. They told the Robeson children that they were entering a no whites area where they were not allowed. The boys, confused, had to learn from their father about Jim Crow laws in the past. (Robeson, George, Maybe the Kids Can Stop the ‘Turnaround’, Long Beach Press-Telegram May 31, 1972 p.28)
Theatre critic Brooks Atkinson wrote in 1962, Hammerstein’s words, especially in You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught, led the lyricist to be dismissed as a federalist do-gooder, explaining the critics used the song to cut him down to size. Atkinson, though, cited the composer’s philosophy as love isn’t love until you give it away. (Atkinson, Brooks: “Theatre Festival Will Back World Federalism” March 15, 1962, Southern Illinoisan p.4)
Teaching that racism has no place among us
The editorial board of the Rochester (NY) Catholic Courier-Journal used the lyrics to call Catholics to stand up for integration. This was in the aftermath of the Ole Miss Riot the previous week in 1962. The violence broke out in response to a black man seeking to attend the Oxford Campus of the University of Mississippi. The editorial listed the discrimination that Catholics suffered in this country adding our role in light of our faith and our history in the United States is to stand against racial segregation and discrimination. There is no place for a Catholic in the white-only viewpoint, the newspaper editorial added. (Mississippi Mentality, Rochester Catholic Courier-Journal, October 5, 1962, p. 7)
The New Bern Sun Journal of New Bern, North Carolina published a letter by a reader who used the lyrics to complain about her congressman’s opposition to a local college accepting a grant to buy books about Muslim culture, that was in 2013. (Herron, Ellen “Muslim Culture” The New Bern Sun Journal Apr 29, 2013 p. 18)
The list goes on to the present.
You can find covers of the song on YouTube by many familiar performers including James Taylor, Patti LaBelle, Mandy Patinkin, Barbra Streisand, Matthew Morrison, Harry Connick, Jr and many other more and lesser-known performers and YouTubers as well.
If you do ever think of songs by Rogers and Hammerstein and think of such tunes as Ole Man River, Oklahoma, Do Re Mi and more, you will not travel far to find someone quote You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught. The critics said it was forgettable but the times now remind us to keep true to the message: racism, hate and fear are taught.