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April 27, 2007
Coloroso on conflict
Parenting expert focuses on genocide.
KELLEY KORBIN
Barbara Coloroso is best known for her parenting books and lectures,
so it may be surprising to some that her new book examines the phenomenon
and history of genocide. However, Coloroso contends that the path
from schoolyard bullying to mass genocide is not such a stretch.
In fact, she said, "The progression from taunting to hacking
a child to death is not a great leap but actually, a short walk."
In a telephone interview with the Independent, Coloroso explained
that she has been studying the subject of genocide for the past
30 years. Her interest in the topic began when she picked up a copy
of Elie Wiesel's Night in an airport lounge and was taken
aback by the fact that, as an educated woman, a former nun, with
a master's degree, she knew nothing about the Holocaust.
She said that, at that time, the Second World War was taught in
schools, but not the details about the Holocaust. She said this
is not surprising, given that war or conflict is always used to
cover genocidal regimes.
Once she began to learn more about the Holocaust, the subject of
genocide became a private passion for her. She said, "From
that point on, any time I would be in a country, whether it was
Guatemala or Venezuala or Argentina with the disappeared, when I
was in Australia walking the Rabbit-Proof Fence or more with native
concerns in Canada, but especially in Europe with the Holocaust,
I would stop to see museums and death camps [about genocides]."
Then, a couple of years ago, she was working in Rwanda with orphans
of the genocide there and she was asked to speak at a university
about her 2003 book The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander.
"That's where, 11 years before, half of the staff and students
had killed the other half," she said. She realized she couldn't
talk to those people who had lived through genocide and talk about
schoolyard bullying without talking about how the same conditions
that enable bullying to exist can lead to genocide.
That discussion led to her latest book, Extraordinary Evil: A
Brief History of Genocide. In it, Coloroso expands her theories
on bullying to help explain how and why genocides happen over and
over again.
Her premise is that bullying is not conflict, it is contempt. "Fighting
is normal, natural and necessary for human beings," she said.
However, bullying occurs when there is pure contempt and dehumanization
of the victim. Coloroso said that that once you have contempt for
someone, you can harm them in unimaginable ways because you then
have no compassion for them.
In the schoolyard, bullies dehumanize their victims by calling them
names and taunting them. In genocidal regimes, it's no different.
"What did they call Jews in Nazi Germany?" she asked.
"Vermin and bacteria, eating at the fabric of our society.
What did they call the Tutsis [in Rwanda]? They called them cockroaches
and snakes ... once you're less than me, I can do anything to you."
The importance in this distinction between conflict and bullying,
said Coloroso, is the way you deal with it. The problem is that,
most often, bullying is treated as conflict, which only serves to
exacerbate the situation.
"If whoever is approaching it as a conflict believes they can
remain neutral, impartial and at the consent of both parties –
which is what peacekeeping troops are all about – if we try
to handle a bullying situation that way, it will blow up in our
face," she said.
Sometimes, bullying victims who have never gotten over what happened
to them become "bullied bullies" who lash out against
society. She believes that Hitler was a "bullied bully"
and said that Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui was likely also
bullied in his youth.
Coloroso advocates a restorative justice system, where victims have
the opportunity to be listened to and validated and where the bully,
or regime, is held accountable and has to repair the damage. And
she doesn't leave out the third party – the bystanders –
who are often willing accomplices to hate and genocide.
However, the positive side is that, through her examination of genocide,
Coloroso came across numerous stories of heroism and goodness in
the face of extreme evil. She said Prof. Liviu Librescu's valiant
attempt to protect his students at Virginia Tech is precisely the
type of story, and person, she will examine in her next book.
Coloroso will be a guest of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre
next Tuesday, May 1. She will speak on the topic of genocide at
the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver at 7:30 p.m. Tickets
are $20. For more information, call 604-264-0499.
Kelley Korbin is a freelance writer living in West Vancouver.
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