This is a story about a photograph taken at a small Ku Klux Klan rally in Georgia in 1992.
The photo shows a child in KKK regalia looking at his reflection in a shield held by a police officer, who is African-American. The officer is there to prevent violence. He is protecting the peace and protecting even the members of the KKK.
The photo has been adopted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a pre-eminent CIvil Rights Organization.
Over the years, as you will read, people have debated what the photo says to them.
It reminded me of the song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific.” The title “You’ve Got to Be Taught to Hate.” The little boy dressed up as a Klansman didn’t hate the man holding the shield. But he will be taught to hate by those who dressed him.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It means hatred is taught.
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John Inman: Agreed.
I remember when I was a child living at home with my parents. We were out driving in a car and my mother saw a black man walking across a gas station lot. She make some comment about how awful that was.
It has taken me years to learn the real problems and to understand that all people are equal and all are worthy of respect.
My conservative Christian cleaning lady has expressed that gay people are abominations in the eyes of god. Her son is gay. I understand why he is now a Buddhist.
It is SO easy to spread hatred and fear. It takes thinking and work to realize it isn’t how life should be.
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There is a frightening tendency in human beings to be totally malleable. If we grow up with certain expectations in life, we tend to accept these expectations. If you grow up with widespread use of the N word, like I did, you have to be taught by parents and counterculture that you need to avoid the word because it hurts people. If nobody ever teaches you otherwise, you never understand.
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Yes, Roy. I tend to use the word pliant. I also grew up with it and heard it more on the first day of a Catholic high school in 10th grade than I had heard it cumulatively before then. And I had a U.S. history teacher who actually said that Crispus Attucks didn’t deserve recognition because “he was probably some drunk hanging around” Boston. I didn’t accept the lesson he was conveying, but most of my classmates did.
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It struck me this morning that your history teacher was a victim of a hero attitude in history. For some, history is a tale of heroic deeds. To those who revere figures in history and from this reverence gain their value system, the idea that all behavior is just a response to organic forces is repulsive. This means that man does not have freedom of the will. This means that we cannot independently derive our value system, but that we must forever live under the influence of a guiding hand made up of our past.
To some of us, this presents no problem. History suggests, after all, that the personal will is at best a rudder. The will does not power the ship. In the face of a wind, it does not even guide the ship, for the power has overcome it. But to those who see themselves as masters of their own path, this is terrifying. So their heroes become vital to them, their preconceptions necessary for philosophical survival.
To those who take a different view of history, heroes are people whose hand turned the rudder of the ship in a direction that placed them in danger at the expense of their own comfort, often at the expense of their own life, for the advancement of a particular idea.
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You remind me of a scene from the Brecht play Galileo:
Andrea: Unhappy is the country that has no heroes! (Unglücklich das Land, das keine Helden hat!)
Galileo: No. Unhappy is the country that needs heroes. (Nein. Unglücklich ist das Land, das Helden nötig hat.)
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History teachers are absolutely essential in education, and I don’t just say that because I am one. It’s more than history–history teachers teach attitudes about others. I take that job VERY seriously, but, unfortunately, others don’t. Between the axing of history and geography because they’re not “STEM subjects,” and the hiring of coaches who are then shoved into history because “It’s easy to teach,” history education in many cases is a catastrophe.
And it shouldn’t be. It CANNOT be. There’s too much at stake.
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Threatened Out West: …”history education in many cases is a catastrophe.”
I had a history class in high school that was ‘taught’ by the football coach. [We had a great winning football team.] He would give assignments to read a certain chapter and then write answers to questions at the end of the chapter. He’d leave and come in towards the end of the class and have kids read what they wrote.
I can’t say I cared much for history.
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Tellingly, as I sit and watch Individual-1 lying in the Rose Garden, one of the people surrounding him is Steve Scalise, who graduated from that school a few years after me.
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I wonder if this ‘ending violence’ includes the putting of children in tents or cages OR taking them away from their parents. Senator Young is a strong follower of Trump. After all, brown and black children don’t count. It would be nice if I’m totally wrong.
…………………….
Senator Todd Young
11:34 AM (12 minutes ago)
Dear Ms. Ring,
Sincerely,
Todd Young
United States Senator
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Carol,
What he means is that the answer to violence is more violence because a good man with a gun can kill a bad man with a gun, and might accidentally kill a few students and teachers while protecting the others. Collateral damage.
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Here’s what it means to me:
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Thank you for sending this picture.
(“Carefully Taught” is the referred song.)
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Amirrorca 🔮
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Would love to know what “Josh” (who would likely be in his 20’s now, or 30) has to say.
The article listed a follow-up story, “Photographer Speaks to Trooper,” but I clicked it, & it came up “Page Not Found.”
Anyone find it?
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The child looks about three to me. My own children did not recognize/ wonder about different skin color until they were 3 or 4. It’s a festive day! The troopers and their interesting child-high gear are part of it. I think of how, for this child, Klan gatherings were like the church barbecues and firemen’s fairs of my rural youth. Most jarring to me: imagining how careful, loving hands sewed that little outfit.
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This is off topic but is something that is being talked about in Idaho. What does it take to be guilty of animal cruelty in Idaho? Good grief. There is still an investigation being done since it happened in front of students.
………………………………..
Teacher charged with animal cruelty found not guilty
PRESTON — After a two-day trial, a verdict has been reached in the case of a science teacher who fed a puppy to a snapping turtle last year.
A six-person jury found Robert Crosland not guilty of animal cruelty. The jury deliberated for around 30 minutes and delivered their verdict to a courtroom packed with friends, family, students and teachers gathered to support Crosland.
Crosland was accused of animal cruelty for feeding a puppy to the snapping turtle in March 2018.
Throughout the trial, multiple witnesses testified the puppy was alive when it was fed to the turtle. However, the puppy was sick and likely to die.
“I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. That’s what’s been so hard in seeing all this because that’s what I’ve been taught my whole life not to let the animal suffer,” Crosland said in a recorded interview presented during the trial.
EastIdahoNews.com will have a complete story shortly.
https://www.eastidahonews.com/2019/01/teacher-accused-of-animal-cruelty-found-not-guilty/
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Idaho Humane Society blasts jury verdict, calls feeding of live puppy to turtle ‘wanton cruelty’
BY KATY MOELLER
JANUARY 05, 2019 10:45 AM,
UPDATED 10 HOURS 4 MINUTES AGO
Idaho’s largest animal welfare organization sharply criticized the acquittal of an eastern Idaho teacher accused of animal cruelty, warning that the case would become a “rallying cry” for renewed efforts by those who support vigorous enforcement of laws protecting animals.
“While we are outraged and saddened at the grievous error in judgment by the jury in this case, sadists who perpetuate acts of violence against helpless animals would be foolish to be emboldened by this recent and anomalous miscarriage of justice.,” the Idaho Humane Society said in a statement on Facebook Friday night…
Robert Crosland, a science teacher at Preston Junior High School, was charged in June with misdemeanor animal cruelty for feeding a live puppy to a snapping turtle that he kept in his classroom….
Read more here: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/northwest/idaho/article223970300.html#storylink=cpy
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