John Kerr and France Nuyen the film South Pacific (1958), 20th Century Fox via YouTube.

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.

The musical South Pacific opened on Broadway in 1949, running 1925 performances and winning 10 Tony Awards. Then it became a hit film in 1958. The cast album, recorded by Columbia Records, spent 69 weeks at Number One on Billboard chart and a total of 400 weeks on the charts, becoming the best-selling album of the 1940s. To say South Pacific was successful would be an understatement, yet it also generated a great deal of controversy. It covered uncomfortable territory. Its two plot lines about sexual tension is based on interracial romance, a strong taboo in that era.

South Pacific has music by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II with book by Hammerstein and director Joshua Logan. The plot is based on James A. Michener‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 collection of short stories Tales Of The South Pacific. Rodgers and Hammerstein believed they could write a musical based on Michener’s work that would be financially successful and, at the same time, send a strong progressive message on racism.

The plot centers on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II. She falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A second story follows, a young U.S. lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman. Racial prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, but most controversially in the lieutenant’s song, You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught. Funny supporting characters, including a cross-dressing petty officer and the Tonkinese girl’s mother, help to tie the stories together.

In the Southern USA, the musical racial theme provoked controversy, for which its creators were unapologetic. You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught was subject to widespread criticism, judged by some to be too controversial or downright inappropriate for a Broadway musical. The song is preceded by a line saying racism is:

 “… not born in you! It happens after you are born…”

Rodgers and Hammerstein risked the entire South Pacific venture against legislative challenges to its decency or supposed Communist agenda. While the show was on a tour of the Southern United States, lawmakers in Georgia introduced a bill outlawing entertainment containing “an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow.” One legislator said that:

 “… a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life.”

Congressman David C. Jones wrote in a letter:

 “We in the South are a proud and progressive people. Half-breeds cannot be proud.”

Rodgers and Hammerstein defended their work strongly. Michener wrote:

“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.”

Nearly 70 years ago, Hammerstein’s message was about race and romance. Yet, on so many levels: race, sexual orientation, class, religion, gender, the challenge of reaching across differences has never been more relevant than today. These lyrics about being taught hatred by your parents/family/community) after what happened over the weekend, show that hatred is not something that is innate. You must learn hatred.