All this week on Facebook I've been posting different Youtube versions of Rodgers & Hammerstein's timely song from South Pacific, You Got To Be Carefully Taught.

It caused quite a controversy in 1949, when the Broadway show opened, especially in my birth region.

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From Wikipedia:

"You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" (sometimes "You've Got to Be Taught" or "Carefully Taught") is a show tune from the1949 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, South Pacific.

South Pacific received scrutiny for its commentary regarding relationships between different races and ethnic groups. In particular, "You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught" was subject to widespread criticism, judged by some to be too controversial or downright inappropriate for the musical stage. Sung by the character Lieutenant Cable, the song is preceded by a line saying racism is "not born in you! It happens after you’re born..."

Rodgers and Hammerstein risked the entire South Pacific venture in light of legislative challenges to its decency or supposed Communist agenda. While the show was on a tour of the Southern United States, lawmakers inGeorgia 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." Rodgers and Hammerstein defended their work strongly. James Michener, upon whose stories South Pacific was based, recalled, "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."

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Sixty Eight years ago.

We are combatting ignorance and confusion now more than ever.

It's a great time to raise your consciousness level a few more degrees.

No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them. -Elie Weisel