In Jean Burgess' poem, `Race Relations', two young children happily play in the sand unaware of their differences and oblivious of the time. This continues until the mother of the white child `Mary', intrudes, ripping apart their friendship. The mother fills Mary's mind with prejudice, hatred and racism. The children's `dream world' is torn asunder and Mary follows her mother without a backwards glance, leaving her one time friend alone in the torn down and trampled wreckage.

Jean Burgess puts forward her view that racism is taught and influenced by others and does not come naturally to one through the racist mother's persona. The mother is livid and fuming with anger because she caught her child playing with another who is different to her own. A sense of sympathy is directed to the children, both black and white. Ironically, if the reader takes a...