"You've got to be carefully taught"

From Tim Hamilton, Dramaturg for SOUTH PACIFIC:

In an earlier post, I wrote a little bit about the relevance of South Pacific when it first opened in 1949. It was relevant not only in terms of its contemporary setting (the war had ended only four years earlier) but also in terms of its thematic discussions, especially that of race.

The song ‘You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught’ caused a huge ruckus - people asked Rodgers and Hammerstein over and over to drop it. The Georgia state legislature even drafted a bill banning the song in the 1954 national tour’s stop in Atlanta. It was denounced on the floor, and two state congressmen said the song was offensive propaganda “in the midst of a fine piece of entertainment” and contained “an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow.” They also said that “intermarriage produced half-breeds. And half-breeds are not conducive to the higher type of society…In the South, we have pure blood lines and we intend to keep it that way.”

Rodgers and Hammerstein refused to cut it, and the legislature finally backed down. In Boston, a Navy lieutenant commander wrote them demanding that the number be cut because it was shoving ideology down the audience’s throats. Hammerstein wrote back, “Please forgive me for not agreeing with you. I am most anxious to make the point not only that prejudice exists and is a problem, but that its birth lies in teaching and not in the fallacious belief that there are biological, physiological, and mental differences between the races…I believe I get the point of your letter very clearly and I realize very well the dangers of overstating the case. But I just feel the case is not fully stated without this song. I wish it were true that all these things were accepted by the public. You say the theme is wearing thin, but in spite of this, I see progress being made only very slowly.”

And this was really par for the course for Rodgers & Hammerstein – you’ve also got The King & I as well as The Sound of Music dealing with very contemporary issues in various ways. They had a strong idea of the moral function of the American musical. In this respect they were really trailblazers – they’d move forward, others would catch up just as they were moving forward again.

If you're interested in reading more about this, Laurence Maslon's book The South Pacific Companion is a good place to start. Andrea Most's article "‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’: The Politics of Race in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific" (Theatre Journal 52. 3, October 2000) is also another really great look at the issue.