It's not enough not to teach children to hate

We Americans have always been good at teaching our children to hate.

We were settled by people who believed it was the duty of folks we later called WASPs to educate the other races and bring people with no religion (or maybe just the wrong religion) home to Jesus.

Some call slavery America's "original sin," but what we did to black Africans actually started after our genocide against native Americans. We take pride in religious freedom and say our country stems from a Judeo-Christian tradition, but countless German and European Jews died when Adolf Hitler was willing to let them leave because too many "good" American Christians thought we had too many Jews in this country already.


And don't forget centuries of hatred toward "papists," or Roman Catholics, much of which manifested itself in hatred of Irish- and Italian-Americans.

We haven't done well with Asians, either. Most people now know about what happened to Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. The brainiacs running this country then said the fact that there was not even one incident of sabotage on the West Coast in the early days after Pearl Harbor was ominous.

I'm leaving things out, but only because I want to get to the point more quickly.

Most Americans don't need to be taught to hate.

We are already very good at it.

A lot of the hatred people feel comes from fear of what to them is unknown, and too many people have never had any real opportunity to travel. My three closest friends in the world have never traveled outside North America. Heck, I was 26 before I did.

I grew up in suburban segregated neighborhoods and never had a black student in one of my classes until 12th grade in 1966. I never had a real conversation with someone of a different race until I was 21, although I initially thought a friend I met in the summer of '65 was Mexican.

It turned out he was just well-tanned.

My two children have been nearly the polar opposite of sheltered Americans, particularly my daughter Pauline Kastner. She is trilingual and has at one time or another been pretty good in two other languages. She was born in Europe and has been posted as a U.S. foreign service officer in Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean and Central America.

Teach your children well ...

Thanks largely to her brilliant mother, Pauline is one of the three smartest people I know. She and her husband Johnathan Roy are working hard to be great parents to their blended family of six children. Here's something she wrote on Facebook recently about the situation in Donald Trump's America.

"Watching the events that have unfolded since the murder of George Floyd has been really hard for us. How do we stand up for human rights in our own country while living overseas as diplomats? How do we educate our children who live in such a doubly-privileged bubble?

"What can we really do? So we started reading, and researching, and listening, and talking, both as adults and with our children. We showed them that the movies we've been watching are primarily (or entirely) cast with white people. That the books we read have heroes who look like us. That this is a symptom of our privilege and one that we haven't done enough to break out of.

"That the problem isn't just some racist cops or other individuals, but a systemic racism that affects every facet of our society: education, health, access to healthy foods, employment, housing, incarceration and the justice system as a whole... the list feels never ending. And overwhelming. And sad. And rage-y.

"It should cause great national embarrassment that we keep sweeping racism under the rug. This isn't a political issue. This is NOT a political issue. This is a human rights issue. We need to recognize the unfair system that we've built and propagated and sustained. And we need to work to actively dismantle it.

"Silence is complicity. So we're doing what we can. We're talking a lot. We're having our older children read Teen Vogue (which has great coverage written with YA readers in mind). We vote, of course.

"But we're also donating to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund which is working to change the laws to dismantle institutionalized racism and hopefully make our society and our country more just. We know that we play only a minuscule role in this, but will add our voices to all the others screaming, crying, and gasping for change."

You might expect me to say I have never been more proud of my daughter. The fact is, though, she is such an exceptional person that I am nearly always proud of her.

During nearly 30 years as I made my living as a writer, the highest compliment I could pay a colleague was when I read something they had written and I found myself wishing I had written it.

Well ...

I not only wish I had written it, I wish I had thought it.

I didn't, though, so the best I can do is pass it along and say it's how more of us should be living.

"South Pacific" was fine for its time, saying you've got to be carefully taught.

But these days, we need to teach our children, grandchildren and all the rest that hate is such an ignorant thing.

When you don't hate, you get Barack Obama.

When you hate, you get Donald Trump.