Hate is an evolutionary loser

People are not born haters.

But they do have “an implicit preference for their in-group,” from the get-go.

Whether they become haters or not depends upon their parents.

And it’s not easy to teach people to hate.

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Children notice difference

My mother too often told this story.

When Paul was three [I’m 72], I took him shopping to Walgreen’s Drug Store. We were in the check-out line and Paul turns and sees a Black man for the first time. Paul starts crying and pointing and would not strop until we left the store.

My partner Rebecca’s mom told a similar story about her three-year-old son Mike [Mike died last year at 72]. They were at the State Fair in Illinois and Mike saw a Black man and said over and over “he’s black, he’s black.”

Two years ago Rebecca and I spent three months in Houston, Texas babysitting Irene, one of Rebecca’s five grandchildren.

One day during the summer of 2020 Rebecca showed Irene a You Tube clip of a friend’s four-year old Chinese granddaughter singing a song. After the brief clip, Irene said “I don’t like her.”

According to Kwame Anthony Appiah in The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity, humans are programmed to start grouping people–making distinctions based upon physical characteristics–by the age of two.

Little Paul, Mike and Irene did what all humans start out doing. They notice human differences and respond.

I was scared, Mike bewildered, Irene displeased. Yet I did not become a hater. Nor did Mike. Irene, well, let’s just say the chance of Irene becoming someone who hates Chinese people is slim to none.

You’ve got to be carefully taught

I first heard the soundtrack to the musical South Pacific in 1958, when I was eight. It was the first record played on the stereo that two men hauled into our living room earlier that day.

For some reason, You’ve got to be carefully taught was my favorite song.

I did not see the film South Pacific until 1980. That’s when I saw the anguish of American Lieutenant Cable and Tonkinese girlfriend Liat. Cable and Liat decide not to marry because love was not enough.

Too many of Cable’s contemporaries had been taught to hate:

People who’s eyes are oddly made and people who’s skin is a different shade

It’s not easy to teach people to hate

There is a hate-formula and the song lays it out.

You’ve got to be taught; to hate and fear

You’ve got to be taught; from year to year

It’s got to be drummed; in your dear little ear…

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late; before you are six or seven or eight

To hate all the people your relatives’ hate…

When I was growing up in America in the 1950s & 60s, I don’t remember my parents saying much about race. My mom did not describe the Walgreen’s incident until I was 30.

The only race comment I heard from my father was that the singer Nat King Cole was a “good negro.” Yes, cringe-worthy to today’s ears, but enlightened contrasted to the racial language I occasionally heard from my dad’s father and brother at Sunday dinners on their farm.

My parents taught their sons to respect everyone.

Rebecca’s mother and father spent one year in the 1940s in Georgia before moving back to Illinois to raise their six children. According to Rebecca, her mom told her kids that Blacks in Georgia had to use different drinking fountains and how wrong that was. Throughout the 1960s, Evelyn Franklin would refer to that Georgia experience when talking with her kids about the moral rightness of the Civil Rights Movement.

Irene is now seven years old and has moved from a scooter to a bicycle. She still lives in Houston with her mom Suzanne and dad Jonathan. Houston is one of America’s most diverse cities and Irene’s daycare, school and neighborhood reflect this diversity.

The evening following four-year-old Irene’s “I don’t like her” comment we all played the I Never Forget a Face memory game. All three adults took every opportunity to talk about how different human faces are and how this difference is good.

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Most people do not become haters because their parents and increasingly the culture that surrounds them send messages into their “little ears” that serve as antidotes to turning the differences children note into fear and then to hatred.

I see differences everywhere in America. And like you I see it up close, 24 hours a day, in my community and on my devices.

There is more of it than at any time in my 72 years. It is both at the root of America’s contentious politics and bigger than politics.

The human animal has been interacting with groups outside her tribe for only 130,000 years. Our brains are trying to keep up with the reality of living with those who look, worship and speak differently.

Hate still sells and not only in America. I will not live to see its sell-by date.

But hate is an evolutionary loser.