YOU'VE GOT TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT

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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!

—Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Hammerstein had it right: I think any sane person would agree that bigotry DOES have to be carefully taught.

Incredibly, Newsweek ran a cover story this week in which they cite a study by Birgitte Vittrup of the Children’s Research Lab at the University of Texas in which researcher’s concluded that children are bigots at birth.

Like many modern “studies” in which liberal “researchers” arrive at preconceived conclusions which the “studies” were designed to support, this conclusion is based not only on faulty data but on faulty logic.

Vittrup’s research was based on only 100 families, all white, and all from the same geographic area. (I find it interesting that liberals are able to see only white-on-black discrimination but never black-on-white prejudice.)

Vittrup instructed the families to show their 5-to-7-year-old children “multiculturally-themed” videos and then discuss race with them, based on a list of topics she provided. She was taken aback when some of the families refused, saying they didn’t want to point out skin color to their children.

Martin Luther King, Jr., dreamed of a world in which a man would be judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. Liberals refuse to allow that dream to come true. They delight in pointing out skin color at every opportunity and insist that people be granted admission to universities and employed in the workplace not on the basis of their qualifications but on the color of their skin.

It comes as no surprise that since Ms. Vittrup’s world revolved around racial identification, she was appalled that some parents simply refused to label people according to their skin color.

Vittrup's mentor at the University of Texas, Rebecca Bigler, experimented with pre-school children by giving half red T-shirts and half blue T-shirts then, after a few weeks, questioning them about which group, the reds or the blues, were better. The children naturally exhibited “team pride” by responding that their group was better, smarter, etc. However, Bigler, whose focus was race, rather than human nature, interpreted these responses as the seeds of bigotry.
Frankly, I’m appalled at Vittrup’s and Bigler’s unfortunate habit of interpreting everything through the lens of race, rather than looking at white children simply as children.

My own child-raising experience is proof positive that children are not born bigots nor is refusing to focus on skin color a sure-fire way to turn them into bigots. I never mentioned skin color to my own two sons unless it was an absolutely essential part of a person’s description. I referred to people by their qualities, citing their words, actions and attitudes, rather than their race. I often wondered whether I was succeeding against the left’s nearly constant focus on race. I got my answer one day while watching a Steelers pre-game show with my older son. I was only half watching the program, which featured two sports commentators, a black man in a blue polo shirt and a white man in a red shirt. “Did you hear what he said!” my son exclaimed. I’d been only half-listening, so I asked him, “What who said?” His response was, “The guy in the blue shirt.” It never occurred to him to identify the men by race, because that aspect had never been given prominence and had never been made the focus of anyone’s identity or worth.

Children are NOT born racists; they must be carefully taught — and it’s liberals who, by their incessant focus on race, are doing the teaching.

If liberals — and blacks — truly want to move beyond race to Rev. King’s dream of being judged solely by the content of their character, they would do well to stop focusing solely on skin color and, instead, focus on each human being’s character and actions.

© 2009 by Libbi Adams. All rights reserved.