NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- I’m a child of the South and yet not. I was born in Atlanta and raised primarily in Jacksonville, during the '50s and '60s. In those times, neither city could claim to be a shining example of racial acceptance and equality.

However, my parents were from elsewhere, and it is my great fortune that their views about race sharply contrasted with those found in some of my friends’ homes. My sisters and I were taught that there is but one race: the human race.

It was a tough time in the South during my youth. I witnessed much turmoil as people struggled to continue to defy or hold true to an essential founding principle of our Nation: “That All Men are Created Equal.”

Recently, I’ve been quite disheartened by all the “race-based” accusations and threats filling the media and conversation apropos to the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman tragedy. We don’t yet know all of the facts in this slaying of one person by another, and we must trust our legal system. Sadly, there has been far too much rush to judgment based on too little information. Political agendas appear to be in play, something most unhelpful as we strive to get to the truth and to justice.

Which brings me back to my youth. The South Pacific record album (yes, it was the dark ages) was regularly played and sung in our home. My parents sometimes used songs as “teachable moment,” and I clearly remember an evening singing songs from it with my Dad, including "You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.” When it ended, he paused the record and took the time explaining to me to make sure I understood its meaning:  Children aren’t born with racial prejudices or fears; they are taught these views. And that is wrong.

He gently explained about the scourge of racial prejudice, so contrary to what we were supposed to stand for in our country, and how it is so destructively passed down from one generation to the next. All men, he said, put their pants on one leg at a time, and when they bleed, the blood is red. Character and decent behavior towards others are what count, separating worthy people from those who are not.

These lessons were engrained many years before I heard Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, envisioning the day when we’d all be judged by our character and not by skin color.

Since that time, our nation has removed every legal barrier to equality of opportunity, but racial divisions, mistrust, fear and even hatred remain. We see this exposed time and again with the Zimmerman/Martin case a recent example. Since racial inequality has no basis in law, prejudice must be perpetuated by the way our young are raised. Family, or lack thereof? Schools and churches, or lack thereof? Our “culture?”

My ideals were shaped by the lessons my parents taught, both in our home and in the way they lived their lives. Racial prejudice and mistreatment of others were absolutely condemned. Would our world not be a better place if more parents and communities taught their children more “carefully?”