Love your home. Understand that others love theirs.

I have told my kids repeatedly that one of the schoolyard hand rhymes they sing is racist and could offend someone. I am only giving you the lyrics here so that I can decry how wrong they are, not to encourage anyone else to repeat them with the schoolgirl glee of my daughters and their peers.

Shame, shame, shame
I don't want to go to Mexico no more, more, more
There's a big fat policeman at the door door door
He grabbed me by the collar
And made me pay a dollar
I don't want to go to Mexico no more, more, more
SHAME!

Now, to my kids' credit, they have replaced the word "policeman" with the word "gorilla" in an attempt to make it less offensive, but as you have probably intuited, their ignorance of racism took things from bad to possibly worse.

My youngest, who is in love with the rhythm, not the words, asked what would be better, so I thought maybe we substitute the word "Mexico" with "Canada" or "Germany" and "gorilla" with "reindeer" or "bear," but no matter whose homeland you're insulting, you're insulting someone's homeland. For now, at least she's spreading the insults a little thinner. But I still regret the suggestion.

I recently heard Wendell Berry speak at the Prairie Festival in Salina, Kansas. He said something I will poorly paraphrase: It is our responsibility as humans to love where we came from, and we have an equal responsibility to understand that other people in other places love where they came from. This is why we should never bomb someone else's home, or our own.

The schoolyard rhyme above must seem very innocent to the faculty on the playground at my daughters' school, otherwise I would have never heard it in my home. But the fact is, it is not innocent. This rhyme not only suggests that someone's home is to be avoided, but it couples it with a message of shame, corruption, and persecution by authorities (or "gorillas," wink wink).

I'd like it to stop coming into my home. Now, for a rousing rendition of Miss Mary Mack!


Here's a funny video of some boys doing Miss Mary Mack. Note the distance between them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z4olzyHh1I