The lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II wrote many beautiful songs for Broadway musicals. One that was not beautiful, but powerful for what it said about race relations in 1949 when the show opened, was “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.” The song was about being taught to hate.
You also must be taught to love. In 2021 America, it looks increasingly like hate is winning.
The latest among many examples is what happened at Eastlake High School in Washington State. Students had planned a tribute to victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. They intended to wear red, white and blue to a football game. When a single unnamed staffer complained, saying the tribute could be seen as “racially insensitive,” the tribute was canceled by school authorities.
Did I miss something? Didn’t people of color perish on 9/11? Weren’t there heroic first responders from different racial and ethnic backgrounds among the dead? Didn’t some of them also die trying to save others? How could honoring them by wearing the colors of the American flag be “racially insensitive”?
Just when you think the country has reached the limits of insanity comes more evidence that we have gone bonkers.