A SHORT WALK FROM BULLYING TO GENOCIDE
by Pamela Steel
Huntsville Forester
/132901
April 9 2009
Ontario, Canada
Barbara Coloroso is angry. As she spoke to a crowd of almost 100
parents at Hidden Valley on Thursday night her anger boiled over. Her
petite frame moved constantly and her hands gestured feverishly as
she delivered a powerful message about raising ethical children. "We
can no longer view hatred as natural, normal or necessary; disparity
in wealth as inevitable; or injustice as simply regrettable," she
said in her easy southern accent. Coloroso was making the connection
between schoolyard bullying, hate crimes and genocide. "It is a
short walk from bullying to hate crimes to genocide — genocide
is the most extreme form of bullying — a far-too-common system of
behaviours that is learned in childhood and rooted in contempt for
another human being who has been deemed by the bully and his or her
accomplices to be worthless, inferior and undeserving of respect,"
she said. "Genocide is not an unimaginable horror. Every genocide
throughout human history has been thoroughly imagined, meticulously
planned, and brutally executed. The pain of a moral world turned on
its head does not begin with the machete cuts of the Hutu Power,
the gas chambers of the Nazis or the death marches of the Young
Turks. All begin with hatred and dehumanizing of the victim."
When children display behaviours rooted in meanness and hatred,
Coloroso believes that immediate intervention and thoughtful discipline
is vital. She says that fostering or ignoring contempt in children
by turning a blind eye to bullying is the genesis of harm and mayhem
in our community and in the world. Her newest book, Extraordinary
Evil; A brief history of genocide, about the atrocities that have
been committed in Rwanda, Armenia and Nazi Germany, may seem a vast
departure from her successful series of books on parenting. But as she
spoke of the many schools she has visited to help in the aftermath of
shootings; when she spoke of the hatred that begins as bullying and
contempt and its violent effect on individual children, the community
and the world, the connection was clear. In the book, she writes, "A
genocidal environment consists of unquestioning obedience to authority,
the normalization of cruelty, and the dehumanization of people. Hate
– often the cold hate of contempt – is a key ingredient. Couple
that hate with hoarding and harming, and you have a recipe for
the demise of community, or the annihilation of an entire group of
people." Cruelty and evil exist in this world. Coloroso has seen the
aftermath firsthand in the eyes of Jean-Paul, a boy who bears four
machete scars on his head, received despite his father’s ultimate
sacrifice as he tried to shield his son from the blades of his Hutu
neighbours in Rwanda. Jean-Paul’s family and 20,000 other people were
murdered that day as the boy hid underneath a pile of dead bodies.
She has seen it in the eyes of children at W.R. Myers High School
in Taber Alberta after they watched one schoolmate shoot down
another. Coloroso connects these atrocities to our daily actions. In
these cases and in countless others, she insists that an ethic
rooted in deep caring could have saved lives. This is the ethic she
encouraged parents in Huntsville to foster in their children. "Your
children are watching," she said. "Celebrate diversity and honour our
common humanity. Our children must see us as more than non-bigoted,
non-racist, or non-sexist. We must show them that we are anti-bigoted,
anti-racist, anti-sexist, actively involved in our community working
against such intolerance and hatred and standing up for social
justice." She rejects the minimizing of bullying by parents and
educators as a source of ultimate harm. Coloroso explained that the
most dangerous kind of bully is often the bullied bully. The kid who
has experienced acts of cruelty until he can’t take it any more is
the child who becomes the shooter.
At the end of her presentation, Coloroso took a moment to express her
sympathy at the loss of Carolyn Bray, a woman who fought for ethics
rooted in deep caring throughout the Muskoka community. She thanked
Carol Corriveau-Truchon of Muskoka Family Focus for making a donation
in her name to the YWCA. Last week’s presentation was free to parents,
sponsored by Muskoka Family Focus and The Best Start Network. Coloroso
was also a speaker at an early childhood education symposium the
following day.