My parents were big fans of Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, and I grew up with the lyrics of show tunes embedded in my memory. In giving a recent workshop for largely inner city high school and community college students from Baltimore, many of whom were striving to better themselves in the midst of gang pressures and family dysfunction, the lyrics of a tune from South Pacific suddenly popped into my mind as being astonishingly timely in addressing the dynamics of fear that has such sway in our society:
“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, before it’s to late, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate, you’ve got to be carefully taught…. You’ve got the be taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made, of people whose skin is a different shade, you’ve got to be carefully taught…..”
How much of our learning is unconscious! We learn by osmosis, we absorb attitudes and beliefs and behaviors by emulating our parents, siblings, teachers and friends. And that mental software runs on automatic, its assumptions taken for granted as the familiar and comforting standard by which all should judged unless and until it is challenged. The bad news is that our unconsciousness runs (and ruins) our lives. The good news is, we can become ever more conscious, and thereby have a choice in what runs us, rather than being victimized by it. Cultural competence is an important element in facing those choices with positive discernment.
