South Pacific in the North Pacific?

In the Broadway musical “South Pacific,” one of the main characters laments his inability to declare his love for the young, South Pacific island girl with whom he has been sleeping at night. Lieutenant Cable sings out that:

You’ve got to be carefully taught to hate and fear.
You’ve got to be carefully taught from year to year.
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

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.

You’ve got to be taught before it is 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!

In the song, Cable is lamenting his own upbringing that led him to be unable to experience the joy he knows is fully within his grasp, if only he could let go of his prejudices and relate to his mistress on more than a purely physical level.

Coming from a relatively liberal household, I always found it strange when I heard people in women’s studies departments, minority rights groups, and other such organizations screaming and protesting about how prevalent discrimination is. I’d never seen it, and I was pretty sure that they’d never seen it either. I mean, where are all of these people who teach their young children to hate like this? Aside from the occasional Fred Phelps or other extremist, I thought those people just weren’t around anymore.

This past weekend, my brother and I looked after our young sister-in-law, who is in elementary school. As we were driving with her down the highway, my brother commented on the license plate on a vehicle in front of us (always seizing on an opportunity to try to teach her something) and pointed out to our young sister-in-law that it was from ‘Alberta.’ I was pleasantly surprised to discover that she knew that Alberta was in Canada, but then pointed out that she didn’t like Canadians.

Filled with curiosity, my brother asked why she didn’t like Canadians, she said that Canadians were the world’s second-worst drivers - beaten out only by “Orientals.” That statement met my brother and I with a heavy silence for a few minutes. Not only does our sister-in-law know nothing about driving (she’s still in a car-seat, for crying out loud!), but she doesn’t even know what an “Oriental” is. She asked my brother and I (both white-as-white-can-be boys from the Central Plains) if we were “Orientals.”

Now I’m left wondering just how carefully taught she was.