“The real question is: why would a person rather have an enemy than a conversation? Why would they rather see themselves as harassed and transgressed instead of having a conversation that would reveal them as an equal participant in creating conflict? There should be a relief in realizing one is not being persecuted, but actually, in the way we have misconstrued these responsibilities, sadly the relief is in confirming that one has been ‘victimized’. It comes with the relieving abdication of responsibility.” ~ Sarah Schulman, Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair
We have all seen this person. They are easy to spot in online videos captured from around the world (although most seem to be from the US).
It’s easy to see the Amy Coopers of the world. It’s harder to see the homeowner peaking out their window, calling police on the Black postal worker delivering mail in the neighbourhood (true story: a Black friend who works for Canada Post asked to have her route changed out of tony Forest Hill because people called the cops on her almost every day while delivering mail).
I have always struggled to understand the Karens of the world 1. It’s become horrifying to watch the videos of various white women absolutely freaking out when they interact with Black people.
Strike that. They don’t interact with Black people. They interact with police about Black people. There’s the horror.
Yeah, I get that it’s racism, but… I have never understood the insanity of it all – is that a fair word? Insanity? Maybe a gentler word like, “unreasonableness”? Nah, “insanity” is more accurate. I never understood the insanity of the reaction until I read Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair, by Sarah Schulman.
Although already 4 years old, the book provides a critical view into 2020, and beyond. Her premise is, people conflate conflict with abuse. We are not disagreeing, you are bullying me. We are not arguing, you are abusing me. You are not contradicting me, you are threatening me.
We confuse normative conflict – that two people are not unanimous in their opinion – with a personal attack. Normative conflict is a power struggle. It’s part of life. Both sides participate. Abuse, on the other hand, is “power over” someone, where only one side participates in the conflict. A white woman calling police on a Black child selling water has only one participant, who is wielding “power over” the other.
I picked up an autographed copy of Schulman’s book a few years ago at Glad Day Bookshop. At the time, I was asking people I didn’t know (in this case, the sales clerk), to recommend a non-fiction book, and I bought it. But I didn’t read it until May, 2020. Now I wish I had taken the book home and read it right away.
I looked at Conflict is Not Abuse sitting on my bookshelf, wondering if I really wanted to get into something this heavy during a pandemic lockdown. I read non-professional online reviews of the book (particularly on Goodreads), and came away doubtful. Of course, I see now that some of the reviews are from people who don’t get it. They miss the entire premise (or maybe didn’t actually read it).
Schulman does not suggest downplaying abuse, but states that separating the overstatements of harm from the event or action is required. “Some of us use the rhetoric of violence and domination to avoid the discomfort of facing our own aggressions.”
When Christian Cooper (in his rainbow t-shirt) interacted with Amy Cooper, she called police, saying “there is an African-American man threatening my life.” This is the rhetoric of violence to avoid her own aggression, and the attempt to dominate through police action.
When BLM Toronto held up the 4-hour Pride Parade in 2016 by another half hour, the Toronto Police union spokesperson said if Pride organizers “don’t rectify this today, their parade as it has come to be known could be in jeopardy. There is no pride parade without Toronto Police…”
Oh, how far we have strayed. Do LGBT people in Toronto need the police to march (these are people who are not working, they are volunteer civilians), in order to have pride in our identity?
“Unresolved, formerly subordinated or traumatized groups of people [can] identify with the supremacy of the state… the lack of recognition that the past is not the present leads to the newly acquired power to punish rather than the self-transformation necessary to resolve conflict and produce justice.”
So says Schulman. But let me rewrite that with an LGBT Toronto history lesson in there…
“Unresolved, formerly subordinated or traumatized groups of people [like the gay activists who used to be arrested and beaten by police, can] identify with the supremacy of the state… the lack of recognition that the past [cops used to hate us] is not the present [they like us, they really like us!] leads to the newly acquired power to punish [BLM must be punished for not liking cops] rather than the self-transformation necessary [cops can walk without guns, in coordinated t-shirts like the fire department] to resolve conflict [the group can still participate but be less threatening] and produce justice [Black LGBT+ aren’t afraid for their lives]. ”
I disagreed with the author on a few things, not the least of which was her insistence that face-to-face communication is required to resolve conflict. I mean, actually talk to someone in person? My anxiety tells me that could get you killed in a dozen different ways. But let’s face it, we all know e-mail and online messaging is easy to misinterpret and makes it really really easy to be an unaccountable asshole. And her chapter on HIV doesn’t sit well with me.
It’s a hard read for anyone with an open mind. You have to be willing to accept some truths, consider other possibilities and then take the time to spot them in real life.
The Karens are easy to spot, until you have to look in the mirror. Schulman puts it best when she says, “I now am able to ask you to read this book the way you would watch a play: not to emerge saying, ‘The play is right!’ but rather to observe that the play reveals human nuance, contradiction, limitation, joy, connection, and the tragedy of separation.”
Chapters are:
Part One: The Conflicted Self and the Abusive State
* In Love: Conflict is not Abuse | Abandoning the Personal: The State and the Production of Abuse | The Police and the Politics of Overstating Harm | HIV Criminalization in Canada
Part Two: The Impulse to Escalate
* On Escalation | Manic Flight Reaction: Trigger + Shaming | Queer Families, Compensatory Motherhood and the Political Culture of Escalation
Part Three: Supremacy/Trauma and the Justification of Injustice: The Israeli War on Gaza
* Watching Genocide Unfold in Real Time
Conclusion: The Duty of Repair
You can get technical details in this book summary.
1 – Hey, from someone named “Sue”, I get that your name is sometimes a word that has nothing to do with you. Sometimes you just have to let language grow.
