Children and Hate Crimes

There is a song in the Broadway musical “South Pacific” that has the lyric “you have to be carefully taught” and it refers to children learning how to be hateful and racist.  But this idea also refers to teaching them the opposite.  In a beautiful piece that appeared in the Washington Post, titled “Perspective:  With the rise in hate crimes, I’m teaching my kids to be kind, not scared”  It describes kindness as a weapon against racism and hatred.  It describes a world where kindness permeates and spreads, while also recognizing that evil exists across the globe, and that there has been a recent disturbing uptick in racism in our own public marketplace.

This got me thinking.  I don’t remember teaching my children to be accepting and kind.  They learned in parochial school, and they learned by example at home.  I don’t recall lecturing my children about accepting others no matter how different they might be.  I don’t remember telling them that people of other cultures, languages and colors enrich our lives.  I can only imagine and hope that having parents who cared about these things somehow transferred to them by osmosis.  However it derived, I am proud to be the mother of grown kids who have manners, who see the world as a fascinating melting pot that enriches our lives, and where we have an obligation to be kind and helpful to others.

The only proactive thing I remember doing to help them grow up tolerant was to ask my older relatives not to speak their racist jokes and prejudices around my children.  It was hard for them.  They were a product of their time, in the first half of the twentieth century, when people lived in enclaves with others just like them, and learned to fear and even hate those who didn’t match them in religion or ethnic backgrounds.  Some of their prejudices trickled down to part of the next generation, depending on where they grew up.  But their parents, the baby boomers, were far more adventurous about the gains to be achieved by working, living and being friends with those from other backgrounds.  And the majority of the children of baby boomers have become even more tolerant.  Using conservative columnist George Will’s example, “this new generation sees being gay as no different than being left-handed.”

Those of us who applaud diversity and acceptance in our society are in the majority, but you would not know that if you have paid attention to the last year of political activity.  You might think that our new leader has simply made it okay to do and say whatever things most of us used to keep secret.  True, he has unleashed a monster, but the fact is most of Americans are kind and are disturbed by the rise in hate crimes – on either side, for any reason.  Most Americans know the difference between right and wrong, whether or not they were carefully taught.