You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught

The Grammys are coming, the Grammys are coming! But before we shake out our formalwear and set up the snacks and red carpet Zoom party, we can thank the Academy for one more postponement, January to March! While it may feel weird to watch the awards at Spring Break, the Academy will definitely defer credit to COVID in hopes of a safer time. Regardless, nominee James Taylor has recorded another poignant lyric that my family can’t seem to shake this year. His American Standard, up for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, contains a rendition of “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.” [1]

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. [2]

Taylor’s startling irony directs us all to the fact that what we teach our children about differences is intentional, whether we realize it or not. Through careful teaching over the course of years or vicarious imprint of subconscious values, we create a sense of loyalty within our young to ourselves as their model. Our children will grow up and ask themselves questions about this imprint. We must check ourselves, analyzing the model. Will we illustrate a quest for creature comforts, a pervasive propulsion toward homogeneity and contentment with the status quo, or will we remind through live action the truth of the diverse Trinity? Will natural feelings of loyalty to that which they have been taught lead them with ease toward relationship with the Beloved, the name Christ calls each one? Thankfully there are a number of resources available to assist in this process of stopping and thinking, and I’d like to highlight several in this article.

Author Jacqueline Woodson and illustrator Rafael López have collaborated to birth a tome for school-aged children, The Day You Begin, a volume chronicling stories of different children’s backgrounds and experiences, that which makes them who they are. “There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you,” they write. [3] We all bring ourselves, our experiences with us into these rooms. When we feel different, the questions that bubble up from our hearts can be difficult for children and adults alike to face. Am I still good? Does my experience matter? No matter our age, some parts of us feel small as we wonder what we have to offer when our characteristics are undervalued, our intricacies compacted. Taylor’s lyric haunts in the background:

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

An intentional artist who truly sees, clever Rafael López constructs many of his illustrations out of ordinary objects, such as a ruler, revealing empathy toward those who feel they don’t measure up to the invisible standard. Who embodies these images within our churches? What messages have we wrongly communicated – messages about some sort of human leveling device that ensures the field of experience is the same for all people? The fact we must face is it’s not. Are we allowing all of the stories a telling and a hearing? When we share the spark of our hearts, and when we share stories of pain, we open a vulnerable space in which the Spirit does God’s connecting work among people and, with exponentially greater fellowship, within the body of Christ. The world’s heart opens up a little wider, and heaven comes down. God’s will as it is in heaven inhabits the earth, and we taste what it’s like when there’s room for infinite diversity among God’s people and the Lord’s work. These stories must be shared, and as adults we hold the power and the influence with which to make space for children and adults alike to tell their stories. We must look around our congregations for where we might be missing these powerful stories of diversity.

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
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

Ta-Nehisi Coates proves hope for generations now young through his work, Between the World and Me, directed through the audience of his own son, age 15 at the time. Coates asks, how do we live “within the all of it … free in this black body?” [4] How do we hold one another accountable to honor one another’s stories; how might we take responsibility for and change the scary tale of the world at large, wielding its power? Why must we dehumanize one another so, while dressed in the same human clothes? [5]

Coates and visual artist Brian Dewayne share a similar interest in the way important narratives are presented to children, each targeting their own boys as their audience. Children of all cultures need to see themselves and their lives reflected in those of the people who shape their faith-walk on earth in its earliest days.

Dewayne, 2012 graduate from ACU’s Graduate School of Theology, has skillfully crafted a children’s illustrated Bible sensitive to the fact that the landscape of our storytelling, whether ancient or contemporary, must honestly reflect original context, time, and place. In Illustrated Bible Poems, Dewayne uptakes this task in producing visually reflective artwork to match the original Afro-Asiatic setting of the biblical narrative. [6] God is a community of diversity – Father, Son, and Spirit – one all, yet none identical. We must, in our churches, allow for this diversity in storytelling even when not all of us are cast in saintly light.

This past year of postponements and readjustments has us holding out on hope for more than just the Grammys. Our diverse God provides “strength for today,” a day in which we must listen to one another’s stories and “bright hope for tomorrow” when we can imagine the embodied truth of Genesis. [7] “God created human beings in his image, in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27, emphasis added). This is the new life, the set apart life, for which Jesus gave his own. There is no difference between people. Christ is in all people, and Christ is all that is important (Col. 3:11).

On the record Common Hymnal Unproduced, Brittney Spencer and David Brymer sing “Just to Be a Child Again.”

I don’t wanna judge my neighbor
I want the stranger as my friend
To unlearn all this learned behavior
To face the darkness within
Give my soul a deep awareness
Tenderize my heart again. [8]

The fact is, we’re all teaching somebody with our lives, and we must consider the profound question of our model. It’s fundamental that we continue to pose this question through our readings and writings, our discussions, and in our churches. This constant interrogation necessarily embodies truth as we pray, “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord my Rock and my Redeemer” (Ps. 19:14). It’s God’s playlist after all.

This article is part one of a two-part series offering resources to churches on issues surrounding racism, cultural diversity, and imbalance of power. Watch for part two, in which I’ll offer annotated “Top Five” selections from the larger bibliography available at siburtinstitute.org/downloads.

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[1] “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” was originally staged in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1949 musical South Pacific, and was controversial in its debut.

[2] James Taylor, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” track 8 on American Standard, Fantasy, 2020.

[3] Jacqueline Woodson and Rafael López, The Day You Begin (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2018).

[4] Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (The Text Publishing Company, 2015), 12.

[5] Coates, 58.

[6] The initial limited edition ordering period for this book has closed. But you can inquire about future orders here or follow Dewayne here.

[7] Thomas Obediah Chisholm and William Marion Runyan, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”

[8] Brittney Spencer and David Brymer, “Just to Be a Child Again,” Common Hymnal Unproduced, 2020.