Somewhere in my culture I was given some messed up values. I was a child in the 1950’s, kindergarten in 1955. I am a white male, raised by a working father and a stay-at-home mother, with too many siblings for the money earned. We were Christians. The preachers were male. My school teachers were female, many not married. My white neighborhood bordered the black neighborhood in my small town. The black children walked south to Horace Mann School while the white children walked north to Thomas Alva Edison grade school. Dad worked and gave the money to Mom, who paid the bills and bought the groceries. She kept house and put food on the table. The children ate first, he ate when he came home from work.

At school the boys participated in organized sports, like basketball. The girls did not. I don’t even remember what the girls were doing in gym class – because we were segregated by gender. Crossing guards were all boys. My brothers and I were not crossing guards, I remember feeling the lack of economic stature. There were no black children until eighth grade when one black boy was sent to our school, that was 1964. Boys who misbehaved were strapped, the girls were not.

By the late 1950’s television was coming of age. We watched Walt Disney and Lawrence Welk. We watched the Lone Ranger, Zorro, and Roy Rogers. We watched Howdy Doody, Whizzo, and Captain Kangaroo. The movies were Disney, Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. Ed Sullivan had Frank Sinatra and then Elvis.

My father was a veteran of World War II. He had a Purple Heart and four Bronze Stars. Like many others he came home, went to work, married, and had children. He did not talk of the war. The retired War General Eisenhower was President. Communism threatened. Nuclear bombs existed in the shadows. As children we were mostly unaware. We played in the streets, stayed out until the street lights came on, or we heard Mom calling.

What did I learn?

My values were being programmed. Not intentionally. Not nefariously. There was no conscious design of prejudice, no purposeful evil. But I did learn.

I learned gender roles.

I learned parenting roles.

I learned racial roles.

I learned work roles.

I learned economic roles.

I learned religious roles.

These were not verbally stated values. We learned through osmosis. We lived these values, they were not openly expressed. We did not even know were were learning values. As adults we often assume our values are correct. We believe we learned the right stuff. We are not inclined to change our childhood values. We often do not know we operate out of those values – we act unconsciously.

The values feel so right – but are often so wrong.

We grow, we learn, we study, we become aware. We have conflict – our intellect becomes out-of-alignment with out programmed values. It seems that just learning, just becoming aware, is not enough to enact change. Something has to happen, something that jars us to our core, something that we cannot ignore. I submit that the something is usually trauma – something very painful – some gut wrenching event that jerks us out of complacency.

We begin to understand the indignity of denial. When we continue abrasive, cruel prejudices in denial of the truth we diminish our humanity. It appears that some people enjoy their prejudice. It only appears so. Those people live in fear. They fear opening Pandora’s Box. They fear the evil that will surely befall them if they abandon their sacred values. The real indignity is in holding on to those values which are negative, hurtful, and unjustified.

This is not to say that those who hang on to tradition are somehow evil or mean spirited. It is to say that childhood values drive our lives and are difficult to challenge. When the racially prejudiced white man opens his door to find his adult daughter coming home to introduce her black fiance he is faced with a challenge to his long held unconscious values. When a homophobic person’s son comes home to introduce his new boyfriend a challenge is laid down. We must appreciate this struggle. These challenges to our ‘God given’ values are not easy. Often these people are being confronted for the first time. This is their first awareness of the folly of their values.

Ultimately we must change. We must confront that which is harmful to others. We must examine our lives, our values.