You've Got to Be Carefully Taught

"You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" is a show tune from the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "South Pacific".

"South Pacific" received scrutiny for its commentary regarding relationships between different races and ethnic groups. In particular, "You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught" was subject to widespread criticism, judged by some to be too controversial or downright inappropriate for the musical stage. [Andrea Most, "‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’: The Politics of Race in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific" Theater Journal 52, no. 3 (October 2000), 306.] Sung by the character Lieutenant Cable, the song is preceded by a lyric saying racism is "not born in you! It happens after you’re born..."

Rodgers and Hammerstein risked the entire "South Pacific" venture in light of legislative challenges to its decency or supposed Communist agenda. While on a tour of the Southern United States, lawmakers in Georgia introduced a bill outlawing entertainment containing "an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow." [Most, "You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught," 307.] One legislator said that "a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life." [Ibid.] Rodgers and Hammerstein defended their work strongly. James Michener, upon whose stories "South Pacific" was based, recalled, "The authors replied stubbornly that this number represented why they had wanted to do this play, and that even if it meant the failure of the production, it was going to stay in." [Ibid.]

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As best I understand it, Rogers & Hammerstein were essentially forced to change the way "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" was sung in order to keep it in the show. The song was originally written to be vocalized in a fast, angry performance. But apparently that was just too powerful for the 1940s and it was toned down with the slower, more Casper Milktoast version we've come to love.