One of my least favorite gossip subsets is “Whoopi Goldberg said something appalling and people are really mad about it.” Whoopi has a long history of saying awful sh-t, and people – mostly conservative jackholes – always climb up her ass about it. Both things can be true: Whoopi says incredibly offensive stuff regularly, and conservatives target Whoopi particularly because she’s a politically liberal Black woman. This week, everyone’s mad at Whoopi because she said some God-awful sh-t about the Holocaust:
“The View” moderator Whoopi Goldberg has apologized after provoking outrage for repeatedly asserting that “the Holocaust isn’t about race.” Her initial comments came during a segment of the ABC talk show on Monday that focused in part on a Tennessee school district’s decision to ban “Maus,” a graphic novel that depicts the horrors of the Holocaust. Earlier this month, McMinn County, Tennessee, Board of Education removed the book from its eighth-grade English language arts curriculum, citing “rough, objectionable language” and a drawing of a nude woman.
During the roundtable discussion, Goldberg said she was surprised that the nudity in “Maus” — and not the Holocaust itself — is what appeared to concern the school board, while co-host Joy Behar replied that the nudity concerns were likely “a canard to throw you off from the fact that they don’t like history that makes White people look bad.”
“Well, this is White people doing it to White people, so y’all gonna fight amongst yourselves,” Goldberg said, referring to the Holocaust. While none of the co-hosts pushed back after that statement, the conversation then turned to how some are attempting to ban problematic parts of the nation’s history, particularly history dealing with race and racism, from being taught in schools. Goldberg responded: “If you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it because the Holocaust isn’t about race.” She added that the Holocaust, which saw an estimated 6 million Jews and 5 million others killed as a result of the Nazis’ racist ideology, was about “man’s inhumanity to man” and said it involved “two White groups of people.”
In a statement late Monday, Goldberg said she made an error with her comment.
“On today’s show, I said the Holocaust “is not about race but about man’s inhumanity to man.” I should have said it is about both,” she wrote on Twitter. “As Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League shared, “The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race.” I stand corrected. The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused.”
Ugh. Of course the Holocaust was about race! Jewish people are Semitic. That’s literally why it’s called “anti-Semitism,” because it’s racism against Semitic people. Nazis literally called Jewish people “an inferior race.” I can’t believe The View cohosts didn’t push back on Whoopi in real time. This is the kind of dumbf–k Holocaust misinformation which LEADS to hate crimes and racist propaganda. Anyway, as you can see, Whoopi “apologized” and everybody was still really mad at her. This time, ABC couldn’t clean up Whoopi’s mess with an on-air apology and a promise to do better. They actually had to do something harsher: they suspended her from The View for two weeks.
Whoopi Goldberg, the comedian and actress who is also a co-host of the ABC talk show “The View,” will be suspended for two weeks, the network announced Tuesday night, after she said repeatedly during an episode of the show that aired on Monday that the Holocaust was not about race, comments that come at a time of rising antisemitism globally. She later apologized.
In a statement on Tuesday night, Kim Godwin, president of ABC News, said that Ms. Goldberg would be suspended for “her wrong and hurtful comments.”
“While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments,” she said. “The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”
There was a fierce backlash to Ms. Goldberg’s remarks. Jewish groups said that her comments were dangerous and the latest example of growing ignorance about the Nazi genocide. During World War II, under a policy of mass extermination, the Nazis killed six million Jews — about a third of the world’s Jewish population at the time — on the basis that they were an inferior race.
For what it’s worth, Page Six’s media insiders say that Whoopi could conceivably be fired from The View. She would only have herself to blame, quite honestly. Imagine digging in your heels about this, just days after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and during a period where there’s a global rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes.
Photos courtesy of Instar.
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I love Whoopi, and she clearly meant “skin colour” not “race”,but I’m glad this came up and she’s taking the lumps because this will educate a lot of people, esp younger people who don’t know much about the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Yeah but Jewish people of European descent have only been considered white in the last 50 – 60 years. The Holocaust was due to race, racism and white supremacy and Whoopi should have known that.
Of course she should have known that. She’s nearly 70 years old, not some some kid born in the 21st century. It wasn’t that long ago that she was written up in the Jewish Chronicle, saying that she’s of Jewish descent. She has said that she’s felt Jewish her whole life.
Race is a social construct rather than a scientific one. Which people are considered a different race is different in different cultures, and at different times.
The Nazis used a quite absurd race theory, which even had two different races of Germans – “Aryan-Nordic” and “Alpine”.
Very well said.
When Jewish people first emigrated to the US, they weren’t considered white either. Same applied to the Irish and Italians.
Also, the Greek immigrants were classified as “non-white” and were targets of the KKK.
I wish I could upvote you!
Race is a social construct, not a biological one. There are numerous scientific articles that prove this which I’m not going to detail (but recommend people look into). Skin color is often used as an indicator of race/ethnicity, but skin color is a spectrum. What someone from one group perceives as a significant difference is different than what someone else might perceive. Same with facial features or height.
Whoppi should also know that black people were socially and economically ostracized under the Nazi regime. Although it wasn’t as systematic as the persecution of Jewish people, they were sent to camps or murdered. Because the Nazi’s were racist.
I’m not sure what you are trying to get at with this comparison, are we trying somehow to say white on white hatred is different than white hatred on insert colour here, i mean first of all jews were not considered white at that time, and secondly genocide is genocide regardless of the colour of the victims. I’m honestly baffled, this seems to be a uniquely American perspective, i’m an african WOC , and pretty familiar with racism, i dont think that there is any valid macro argument to be made here, my experience walking down the street today is a hell of a lot better than that of a jew in germany during WW2. Yes probably a jewish woman walking down the street in America/Europe TODAY will have a different experience to me, but that’s neither here nor there and completely misses the context in a discussion about the holocaust
I kind of agree – I feel like Whoopi was talking from her history with racism which has typically been skin color related. From her perspective, i could see where a “white” germanic people discriminating against a “white” Jewish people doesn’t have the same visual distinctions she experienced in her youth, especially during the American civil rights movement. As if race = skin color. Not defending her, just trying to understand where her words may have came from …?
thats where you’d be wrong . it was about race i am black and jewish non convert . google josef nassy he is a family member he was a victim of the nazis racist regime… at the time we were not considered people a lesser people it was most definitely about race. Nazis went after you even if you had one jewish great grandparents.. they figured your whole line was tainted.
It’s time for ABC to get rid of this show. For long time, the View has been of no value to its audience and has been just a toxic stew.
Agree. It’s well past time for this show to end.
I cannot agree more
Yes! – it’s a horrible, frustrating show.
I think what Whoopi said was ignorant. However, I am confused about how this became such a big issue that it lead to her suspension. She did write an apology though verbally she didn’t seem really contrite.
Was she so blase about what she said inside of ABC News that they put her on suspension or do they just really want to get rid of her?
she fake-apologized, then doubled down while talking to Colbert with “i am going to take your word for it”. Basically, your “sorry if you feel offended” kind of apology. I canceled Whoopi a long time ago, when she first defended Polanski, then Mel GIbson and then Crosby. She is horrible and should be fired.
It’s a big deal because the Nazis didn’t kill 12 million people, half of whom were Jewish, out of man’s inhumanity to man. They deliberately created “races” of people to justify genocide.
To be accurate, the Nazis did not create those “races”. They merely codified what was common and centuries old bigotry and racism in the European culture.
as a black jewish person .. she was ignorant. jews come in all hues and backgrounds. the mainstream media doesnt help depicting us jewish people as homogeneous “white” people. we aren’t we are semitic and we range from pale red heads to black . so i can forgive her ignorance and give her the opportunity to
go and learn and educate herself
I think she actually brings up an important….issue? area of confusion? topic? I don’t know how to put it. But MANY people don’t think the Holocaust was about race, they think it was about religion, so while she was of course wrong and I’m glad the View is suspending her for it, I also wish the View would take this opportunity to further educate people on this. If we want people to remember the Holocaust, that means really understanding what happened and why, so making sure people understand that it was of course about race is really important IMO.
How do people think Holocaust wasn’t about race ? Nazis clearly believed in a superior Aryan race
I think its because some people (many people?) don’t think of Jewish people as a race? So the part about the superior Aryan race and then the anti-Semitism kind of gets mixed up for people?
I don’t know, but I can tell you that its something I do hear a lot – that the holocaust wasn’t about race. I don’t know if that started getting pushed as a way to diminish the Holocaust (because frankly I don’t think killing millions of people for their religion but not race isn’t quite the defense that some may think) but I do think its a more widespread issue than some may realize. And I think at this point some (like Whoopi) may think that it wasn’t about race without trying to diminish it but I do think that’s what it does.
Based on my education, where I did learn about the Holocaust but not really that in depth outside of Anne Frank in 8th grade, I’m not sure how good a job we do of teaching it in this country. Most of what I know about the Holocaust and Hitler and the Nazis has come from my own reading.
@Becks1, I hear this too, and heard it a lot when the orange goober was president. I think the people I heard it from (deep south conservatives that I’m sadly related to) during that time pushed the ‘it was about religion’ button not only to minimize the Holocaust, but to downplay their own white supremacist views and their own fall into fascism. Weird flex on their part, but they did it.
So, when folks say “the social construction of race,” that means that race is defined by societies and it changes depending on social contexts. We know that whiteness is not a stagnant category, has changed over time, and has changed in definition to include all sorts of folks who wouldn’t have been included or seen as “white” before. That’s why we see white Latino folks like Ted Cruz enveloped into whiteness now, but he would not have been privileged in the same way in early US history. Race is subject to history and politics–our perception of race changes.
According to the US census bureau, I think middle easterners are classified as white??? However, religion becomes a particularly powerful intersectional marker of race–someone light skinned like Ted Cruz practicing sikhism, for example, would most likely be racialized as non-white in the US, despite what the census bureau says about race identity.
I think, it is because a lot of people hear “Jewish” and think “White” and, when they think about race issues they think of them in the context of skin color.
The Nazi’s checked all the boxes though, they executed people with disabilities, the Polish, gypsies, the homeless, prostitutes, folks on welfare, addicts, anyone not heterosexual, Jehova’s Witnesses, etc. etc. Their belief in a superior Aryan race was pretty much intended to encompass only healthy, straight German Catholic whites with no addiction issues. All these jackasses in the United States with their Nazi paraphernalia 100% would have been thrown in a camp.
It was really interesting to read all of your answers!! Thanks
@superashes
Perfect statment, the other victims are forgotten too often, but you missed one point. The protestant Christians collaborated far more with the Nazis than the Catholics. The was a strong correlation between protestant beliefs and Nazi voters and even plans of a nazi evangelical church with esoteric elements which is happening with the evangelical right again at the moment.
@Lara I didn’t realize that, it is both interesting and absolutely horrifying.
I am one of those people! I have been trying to educate myself the past couple days, on how a religion can be a race, and talking with different Jewish friends or family members. I feel Whoopi is too much sometimes, and really is stubborn, so I hope she does try to take this time to reflect.
I also think that The View should have used this as a major opportunity to discuss the very complicated issue of race. It requires understanding that ideas of race change over time and are malleable –it isn’t just about Judaism being a different religions, Nazis were drawing on ideas about eugenics and anthropological hierarchies of “races” and geographical regions and all kinds of “scientific” ideas about groups of people –and more importantly, that they weren’t alone in this. Here in the US those same ideas about race (and racial hierarchy) were also being used to naturalize hierarchies and support white supremacy (which, in the early 20th century meant Northern Europeans – it didn’t really include Southern Europeans, Jewish people, and even the Irish were not totally considered white for a long time. The second Klan in the 1920s was anti-Black, but also anti-semitic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Catholic. That is also why so many post-WWII movies have a group of ethnic Americans — usually a midwestern WASP, an Italian guy, an Irish American dude, sometimes a Jewish kid from the city, etc. learning that they were were all Americans and bonding over fighting Nazis– the war was a big turning point for many of those groups finally being considered “white” though obviously there were still prejudices and antisemitism and, of course, racism after the war)
Anyway, most Americans need to know a lot more of this history and shouldn’t be banning books that make them “uncomfortable”
@ Alarmjaguar, your points are very insightful and accurate as to why and how we should be educating our children with regards to the Holocaust.
There was a petition being sent via email with regards to the Mais book not being removed from Tennessee schools required reading. It’s absolutely unacceptable for students NOT to learn of the tragedies that occurred during the Holocaust.
https://milled.com/moveon-org/maus-book-ban-petition-fSPHjk5Op_jjIVsR
‘Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.’
Quote of writer and philosopher George Santayana
@BECKS1- As a Jewish person whose family was monumentally impacted by the Holocaust, you are correct in that it is horrifically under-taught in schools. However, ignorance is not a reason or excuse. Just as it was said throughout the BLM movement, it is not up to Black people to teach others. People need to self-educate. The same applies here. It’s disturbing that people will take what little they are taught in school about this or hear in everyday life and take it at face value without educating themselves further. So many think that WWII &/or the Holocaust are obsolete because “it happened so long ago”. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t all that long ago. Without learning, history repeats itself. Generational trauma from this era is also very prevalent- for me included, who I guess would be considered an ‘Elder Millenial’ . It’s been a black cloud over my upbringing my whole life. Overall, just a tone-deaf comment from her.
Beautifully put, Polski50. Yours words resonate so deeply with me (I am a 2nd Gen “survivor”).
Oh I do agree with you that people need to self-educate, and I don’t think the burden should be on Jewish people to teach others about what happened or why comments like Whoopi’s are problematic etc.
But the under-teaching of the Holocaust in schools IS a big issue especially in this context about the banning of a book about the holocaust. I don’t know if its ironic per se, but I think Whoopi’s comments do sort of prove the point – we should not be banning books like this because as it is, we aren’t doing enough to teach children about World War II and the Holocaust.
People should always take additional steps to learn more than what they learn in school, especially about a topic like this, but as a starting point, the schools can do better too and can start by not banning books.
hope that makes sense.
“I also wish the View would take this opportunity to further educate people on this.”
YES. They need to invite someone on the show who is more educated on the subject than their hosts, and use this spotlight to inform.
It’s sad that Whoopi is not fully aware of the history of the Holocaust. It is not well-taught in many schools in the US beyond reading Anne Frank.
I suspect she is coming from a place that many Jewish people in America are “coded” as white based on skin tone and experience some white privilege. But that doesn’t excuse the ignorant comments.
It isn’t well taught here. I really only remember reading The Diary of Anne Frank, but not really understanding the whole situation. It’s really sad, and kind of embarrassing
Overwhelming majority of Jews in USA are Ashkenazi and that’s why Jews worldwide are considered white because of the strength of the USA’s reach. If the majority in the USA were any of the other branches of Judaism, Jews would not be universally classified as white. The USA through its influence pushes its racial classifications worldwide so Jews globally are now considered white Europeans despite the vast majority of us outside the USA having never had ancestors who lived in Europe. As an example, in Israel the majority are Mizrachi Jews.
In Israel, 50% of Jews identify as Ashkenazi, so I do not agree that in Israel, the majority are Mizrachi Jews. Ashkenazi Jews ARE in the vast majority in the U.S, however. And I am always shocked at how little that young people—those born from around 1990, on–know about the Holocaust. It’s no longer considered an important enough chapter in history, and a good chance for essential education about the universal cruelty humans are capable of. The historically persecuted lives endured by Jews, inflicted on them by almost all other groups, most terribly in Europe, is as important as the study of slavery in every country, genocide in every country, and the mass killings of native people on several continents, in North America, of course including the U.S. and its intrusive, calculated, murderous atrocities towards the natives under the horrifying conviction of white peoples’ “Manifest Destiny.” I learned so little, growing up, in school, of these human, awful things; they need to be uncovered and revealed, unstifled, dredged back from the silenced past, so that the full story of ALL people and their voices can be heard.
im Ashkenazi and black .. so… no its how we as jews are depicted which isn’t accurate. we are a tapestry and we come in all hues. we can be latino and askenazi look white and be mizrahi or sephardic . better education and representation would help the ignorance
I was watching CBS yesterday morning and Gayle King brought up a valid point with regards to how Whoopi couldn’t recognize the “race” issue to her own issues that she has dealt with regarding her skin color. I am not excusing her behaviour but when you look at it through the eyes of a race that has been lynched, murdered, suffered by socioeconomic factors, she was looking at it from her perspective. Though I agree that she was so far off the deep end on this issue! I hope that Whoopi takes the necessary steps in educating herself. It was awful to watch when she said it, certainly worthy of cringing out of the ignorance.
And I would like to add that The View should take this opportunity to discuss the horrors of the Holocaust. It would be wonderful that they teach those that are not as informed as they can be.
Thing is, BSN, throughout history, Jews HAVE been lynched, murdered, and suffered socio-economically because of being Jewish. They were also enslaved at times.
My dad is a Holocaust survivor. He has told us many stories of how, as a child in the village in Poland where he grew up, he and his brothers and friends, were chased, cursed at, beaten up, spit on etc. How his father and other men weren’t “allowed” to “own” a business of his own. Then, when the Nazis came up, all of this got worse. Jews AND Poles WERE strung up as “examples” of what will happen for helping/hiding Jews. And let’s not even start of the horrors that went on IN the camps.
It’s not just Whoopie’s point of view. It’s belongs to a lot of others.
I actually think Robin’s excuses for Whoopi make it worse. There is a real ugly strain of anti-Semitism in the black community and you heard strains of it in both Robin and Whoopi’s comments.
I feel like every school (or state) must be different. We had A LOT of Holocaust education, starting in the 4th grade. I remember we watched the movie A Friendship in Vienna that year as a somewhat gentle introduction. In high school, most of our junior year History class was about the Holocaust, and there was an elective class on Holocaust and Genocide, and they took a trip to the Holocaust museum in DC.
You’re right—the schools I went to taught NOTHING about World War II. We read some of the Diary of Anne Frank in-class, and that was it! I had to learn about it, and the Holocaust, from college courses and Jewish relatives.
It was for some reason considered far more important for American history to always start with Columbus, then cover the Revolutionary War in great detail, then maaaybe if we were lucky we would get up to the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction….year after year. I remember flicking to the end of my textbook and looking in frustration at more modern, still-impacting stuff I knew we’d never get to. It’s a disgrace.
Is it possible she was referring to the millions of non Jews that were also killed in the Holocaust?
Whoopi is sort of known for these awful tales though, isn’t she? Sometimes I wonder if she is trying to get fired.
Well, ethnicity, not race, in this case. I don’t think she quite meant it the way some are taking it, but it’s cringe worthy because it’s very ethnocentric and American to not be better understand the history of how Jews have been systemically treated. Colorism and race may be the big problems here in the States, but anti-Semitism is on the rise. We’ve seen increasing amounts of violence against them here, and something like 40% have reported experiencing hostility. That’s a much higher number than I think any of us would have guessed, so it’s dangerous to downplay it.
It was about race because the Nazis viewed the Jewish people as a different and sub-human race.
To a 21st century American, it’s about ethnicity. To a 20th century Nazi, it was about race.
Thank you, this is a really good way of explaining the nuance of how our society’s understanding of Jewish identity has shifted in the last half century.
Jews were persecuted as “Christ Killers” for *thousands* of years. The time comparison isn’t the same, Helen. It wasn’t until Pope Paul came out in the mid 60s was that denounced.
@ Veronica, I decided to search the FBI database of hate related crimes and for the year of 2015, it doubled in mere months. Due to the anti-Semitism of the last administration, caused the flowing years to experience record level numbers not seen for either option of decades or since tracking hate crimes. The further the reposting from the FBI had one year that grew to a 675% increase from the previous year. This isn’t a fluke. This is solely based on the last administrations actions/statements that brought about the staggering numbers. Unfortunately it may require the deaths of these MAGATS to bring about change. In addition we have to fear that is their children will carry on their loved ones mindset. It’s incredibly upsetting to see the hatred being drilled into the heads of their children. Its another example of a mindset that is due to their upbringing.
I love Maus. It’s an extraordinary, powerful book. It’s actually the perfect way to teach kids about the holocaust because it’s graphic format is so accessible to kids. And the reason for banning, “drawing of a nude woman” ? Has that school board actually looked at the book? All the characters are represented as animals. Jews are mice, Germans are cats etc. A drawing of a nude mouse is not exactly the same as a nude woman.
I don’t remember which volume of Maus it’s in, but in one of them Spiegelman reproduces an earlier non-mouse style graphic short story about his mother’s suicide, and she is naked in part of that due to the manner of her death. However, that’s about a concentration camp survivor taking her own life due to her severe PTSD. It’s in no way meant to be titillating, and if a school board thinks it is, then they’re the ones with the problem.
The whole discussion about the banning of Maus is getting lost in this, and, not excusing Whoopi’s bad comments and ABC’s disciplinary actions, may be the point of some of the conservative uproar over this. Ben Shapiro, while not screaming incessantly that no Black woman is qualified for the US Supreme Court, tweeted no fewer than 3 dozen attacks on Whoopi AFTER she apologized but has not made a single mention, in any of his multiple forums about the banning of Maus or the Nazi march in Florida, both of which were done by HIS followers. They are using Whoopi to distract from their own failings and bad behavior.
I was shocked when I heard about this. That show is well past it’s expiration date. Time to cancel it.
The Jewish people (and many of the other groups Nazis targeted) were considered sub-human races by the Nazis, it’s incredibly well-documented in their propaganda and documents – in the history of humanity the concept of “race” hasn’t only been synonymous with skin colour, and the broader concept of “white” that we have today excluded a lot of ethnic groups that we now often consider “white”.
Maus is great, it was obligatory reading in my undergrad history courses on WW2.
I’m gonna sit this one out as it’s too emotional of a subject for me. My mother’s side of the family, including my grandfather, died in concentration camps.
The long term effects of the Holocaust are still a sharply stinging wound for my mom & no matter how much distance she’s tried to put between herself & that event she’ll never outrun it.
I too have a lot of generational trauma in my family from the Holocaust. I think it’s not something people understand. Those who survived never stopped living it and their children felt that. My generation, the grandchildren, were still raised with the stories and it was a constant presence in our life. The anxiety and sense of otherness has been passed down in my family.
Exactly, Bettyrose. That is exactly it. Thank you for putting it so succinctly. This is what many of us feel.
Hugs to you 💕
My mother has overcome incredible obstacles, including leaving post WW2 Communisn in E Germany.
She obtained a rare & coveted visa as an apprentice in her university program, moving to France & eventually the States, working for the military where she met my dad, settled on a farm in the Midwest & raised a family, all the while concealing her Jewish background from everyone but my dad.
I always suspected it, but she didn’t fully tell me her story until I was 20 years old.
My lovely mumzy 🥲
{{{{{❤️💔}}}}}
Thank you to both of you for sharing.
I mean, Jewish people are white though, generally?… I guess she got confused with definitions, but not really saying anything evil or denying Holocaust…
But at the time of the Holocaust, Jewish people were not considered white and some white supremacists still don’t consider them to white. That’s what Whoopi got wrong.
Holocaust was racism, pure and simple. denying that and basically saying that it was “white on white crime” isn’t just ignorant, it’s dangerous. The fact that she doubled down afterwards make the whole thing even more despicable. Time to go, Whoopi.
Hitler believed that Germans were the master race. Jews and other targeted people were an inferior race. It was definitely about race
I said this yesterday on a different thread in a different context. White is a social construct that began in the US with slavery to prevent dirt poor ethnic groups of European origin to identify with race rather than social class. It was a powerful tool of mind control to prevent uprisings against slavery. And again during segregation. Hitler even looked to the US as a model for racial segregation. So it’s hard to justify an argument that it wasn’t about race.
“Hitler even looked to the US as a model for racial segregation. So, it’s hard to justify an argument that it wasn’t about race.” Many people don’t know (or forgot) about this fact. That’s why I find it puzzling when some Americans in public life point fingers at Nazi Germany as if to say, “It could never happen here.” They forget that Hitler, among other things, looked at the way the U.S. used segregation and grotesque caricatures in schoolbooks (and newspapers & postcards) to desensitize White children from a young age to atrocities against Black Americans (while boasting about melting pots and land of the free).
Likewise, Germany used offensive caricatures of Jews in newspapers and schoolbooks to desensitize their children to anything done to Jews there. Once they are seen as “different” then anything you do is okay; and if society doesn’t seem to mind what is done with one group, then they could also move on to other groups like Romas, the disabled, homosexuals.
Jews are only considered white when it is convenient to those who want to get rid of us or diminish our history. Whatever it takes to justify the hatred. The names may change (communists, capitalists, white, other, colonialists, and on and on, all the way back to christ killers) but the result is always the same. Dead Jews.
The Jewish people are not a singular race. There are Jewish people from all over the world with all kinds of skin colors. (And race is just a construct anyway.)
But the Nazis did not view European Jews as “white” or “Aryan.” They were defined as a lesser race and considered subhuman. So it’s still entirely accurate to say the Holocaust was about racism.
@Lana: Many Jews do not consider themselves white, even if western society only recently does in the last few decades. That is their choice how to define themselves, not you and your sheer ignorance. There are many types of Jews, Beta, Sephardic, Sephardic, Mizrahi etc. Jews come from many different countries and in all colors. Ultimately, Jews were exiled from ancient Israel to many lands, and so are of Middle Eastern descent, even ones who recently come from Eastern Europe. This is confirmed through genetic testing. And that isn’t even the point, because if you had read any of this post or any others or any type of history on this, you would have seen that in the thousands of years before the Holocaust, Jews were seen as other, beaten, murdered, enslaved, tortured, mutilated, segregated from soccer in ghettos (an Italian term that originally meant a Jewish enclosure that was co-opted by African-American and American society and is actually very offensive to Jews) and then the Nazi’s used that existing prejudice against Jews and expanded that they were of an inferior race and needed to be exterminated.
Society- not soccer
I wonder how different it is taught in the US, compared to Europe and other places. I know my education failed me, and it is up to me to learn.
Her comment that “y’all gonna fight amongst yourselves” is a classic tool used by racists. It sets up the “us vs. them” narrative, which perpetuates racial tensions. Even if she genuinely believed that the Holocaust wasn’t about race, does that make the fact that millions perished less deserving of her respect, sympathy and sensitivity? I’m so disgusted by her comments. They are ignorant, stupid, shameful, and divisive. She should be fired. There are other black women in the public sphere that can bring valuable perspective to the table. She doesn’t.
That’s the part that I find inexcusable. Even if it was “just” about religion and not about race, because its white people doing it to other white people its not something she’s going to get involved in and is going to say “y’all fight amongst yourselves?” that is really bad IMO.
Millions of people died in a really horrific way and the ones who didn’t die were traumatized by what happened to them. She’s going to brush that off by saying “this is white people doing it to white people so y’all fight amongst yourselves?”
And also Joy’s point was really valid – that a book like Maus is being banned using nudity as a pretext because some people don’t want our children learning about AND understanding the Holocaust.
Joy seems to be the sharpest of them. I know they want drama and weird takes (I mean they had Sharon Osborne and Meghan McCain on ffs) but Whoopi, much as I love(d) her, produces bad ones.
it’s a bummer, I remember when she got her start in NYC, and she has had an amazing career. but she really shouldn’t be commenting on ish she doesn’t know about.
The Holocaust was intended by the Nazis to murder all Jews. The Jews are tribes: some are Semetic in ancestry, a few marry in, a few convert. The Nazis murdered (or attempted to) every person with a Jewish grandparent they could. By not saying that – by calling it a war among white people – you erase history and the near annihilation of Jews.
👏🏼
It literally came down to the “one drop” rule. My dad told me how people were dragged to be hanged, screaming (in German), “I AM NOT A JEW”, but because they may’ve had a great-grandparent or relative who was, Hitler considered THEM Jewish.
For those of you who don’t get it, and unapologetically I’m appalled that you don’t, Nazis were WHITE SUPREMACISTS who believed in an Aryan nation. They targeted Jews for their race, not their religion, as well as gypsies, homosexuals, even Italians and Greeks, for being “dirty” and “inferior”. They hated Jewish peoples looks, their noses, their dark or wavy hair, and so on. They branded them like cows with the Star of David to signal their “inferior” genetic pool, not the fact that they didn’t celebrate Christmas. Please get it together people, especially Whoopi Goldberg!!!!
100% correct.
Yes.
Political cartoons in newspapers depicted Jews as rats.
Cruel, dehumanizing. Sick.
“G****” is a racial slur, just fyi, please use Roma or Romani instead.
This is an example of what happens when an uniformed person who hasn’t bothered to educate themselves on a topic gives their opinion. It’s dangerous. Her confidence in saying it wasn’t about race on national television to a wide audience is menacing. A topic like the Holocaust should not be a topic for “debate”; and a person who has zero family connection to it should not be correcting her Jewish colleague.
The odd thing is that Whoopie has claimed connection – she has said she’s Jewish.
No, she is not Jewish. She has said she identifies as being Jewish but that’s not her heritage in any way.
She changed her surname to a Jewish one because her mother advised her that pretending to be Jewish was going to help her career because “Hollywood is run by Jews”.
Her Jewish identity is nothing more than a racist roleplay.
Exactly. Her identification with Jewish culture is built on a stereotype. To say she considers herself Jewish is so insulting when she was not born or raised Jewish, she never converted, she’s admitted she doesn’t practice the traditions or religion; and now has insulted generations of persecuted Jewish people by making false statements about the Holocaust. This is a clear reminder why there needs to be Holocaust education in schools.
I hope this is okay, because while I just re-read the comment policy, I don’t often see comments talking about other websites.
Anyway, there are some really good online and print resources if you find that family/friends/yourself have a gap in knowledge. Most of my online list would be American sources but the books are mostly British/European authors
-The US Holocaust Memorial Museum website very carefully covers topics from attitudes in Germany to the more technical aspects of genocide in video and articles. Their main focus is on the Jewish experience (the Shoah) rather than other groups.
-PBS generally tells individuals or families stories about their own tragedies and heroics during that time
-centropa dot org has brief video primers on European history
– Richard J Evans, historian, is the absolute best. He has written a ton of books on Germany and was the main witness in the David Irving Holocaust denial trial. The transcripts of Irving’s libel trial are preserved at holocaustdenialontrial dot org and anything Evans writes is worth reading
-Ian Kershaw’s Hitler
-Elie Wiesel, Night
Those were off the top of my head. If anyone has others, please tell me!
Thanks for the info!
Loved Elie Wiesel, Night.
USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archives Online. Originally established to document the stories of remaining Holocaust survivors and witnesses, now includes testimonies relating to other genocides, including Armenia, China, Cambodia, Rwanda, etc.
Great source, thank you!
There is a lovely book for small children called, “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” that I used for my classes (1st – 3rd gr.) It’s title comes from the poems and pictures that the children of Terezin, Czechoslovakia concentration camp made and were smuggled out. Check it out.
https://www.amazon.com/Never-Saw-Another-Butterfly-Concentration/dp/0805210156
Thank you! I will
A long time ago, when I was still in college, a friend of mine whose parents had emigrated to New York from Israel, told me about traveling home just after 9/11 and being called a slur that involves the n-word but is directed toward Middle Eastern people by his cab driver. My friend is of both Sephardic and Ashkenazi ancestry, and phenotypically he’s very brown — literally not white in skin color, and pretty close to my own, and I’m black.
I listened to his story, and expressed my disgust about what happened to him and ended with a summary comment of “racism is the worst” or something similar, which stopped him in his tracks. My friend — with his beautiful brown skin and very ethnic name — was born here. His parents immigrated, but he was born here.
He got flustered and upset with me. He considered himself white, and had never thought that other people might classify him differently. It really bothered him that I didn’t see him as white — he was *mad* at me for questioning his whiteness. My boyfriend at the time was Jewish. He considered himself Jewish *and* white. Skin tone-wise, sure, he was white, but he grew up in a different part of the country and had been pretty cloistered in his community before college; he got that there are all these unspoken “levels” of whiteness in America, and that he could pass most of the time but that he was also in danger at times.
My point in saying all of this is that race is complicated. I think Whoopi has abhorrent thoughts and opinions about many things, and she should have limited the scope of her point to “this book should not have been banned” and given the floor to Joy, who was actually making great points.
But this has, again, been a missed opportunity by The View to have a discussion that’s actually interesting/edifying about race in America because it makes people uncomfortable. Suspend Whoopi, sure, but keep having the conversation. We need to have this conversation.
@Osito great points. Race, sex and gender are so complicated because they are close to the absolute bottom of our self-identity and id, and vary so greatly.
Banning these types of books is just perpetuating the ignorance on these topics. Like how many more people will say this type of nonsense when it’s not being taught correctly or thoughtfully.
A bit of a silver lining in the face of ignorance is Maus is that is a best seller on Amazon.
The Holocaust didn’t spring up from nowhere and Hitler didn’t invent anti-Semitism. The “scholarly” theory that Jews were a distinct and inferior race came out of France in the late 1800’s – the idea being that even if Jews changed their religion, they couldn’t change their race. And with the Dreyfus Affair, which was pretty much conducted in the international press, this theory spread everywhere. The anti-Jewish cartoons in the French press at the time are really shocking.
Not just France. There was a huge current of anti-Semitism running across Europe and America too.
If you google eugenics and social Darwinism, the concept of races categorised as inferior and superiors was shockingly common from the end of the nineteenth century throughout the first half of the twentieth.
As far as Jewish persecution, that has existed forever.
Jewish ghettos exist in European cities and go back to the Middle-Ages.
The Spanish Inquisition (late 15th century) was founded specially to root out ‘heretics’. The King and Queen of the newly united kingdom of Spain actually passed a law that gave Jews months to either convert or face exile- or death if they stayed.
Later on even converted Jews were executed on suspicion of still pracitising their faith.
They eventually went back generations checking for Jewish blood, just like the Nazis did centuries later. The famous composer Felix Mendelssohn was blacklisted by the Nazis when one of his grandparents was found to have possible Jewish blood.
As far as Jewish history goes, race and religion were always considered one and the same when it came to scapegoat and persecute them.
My friend (50 years old) did a study of anti-semitism and violence in Jewish history as far back as 1400 BC. There have only been 300 years of peace for the Jewish people from then til now. I have a graphic but it doesn’t belong to me so I can’t share it.
I think one of the biggest problems, and one we’ll see grow as we come closer to having no living survivors among us, is that the Holocaust is treated and taught as an anomaly and one perpetrated by the Nazis, unique in history and only motivated by Hitler and the Nazi parry.
It’s about as accurate as the way racism is taught in America as beginning and ending with southern slavery and bigotry.
The Holocaust is only one chapter in a history of bigotry that predated the Atlantic slave trade and persists to the day the entire world over.
People know vaguely or even specifically about the horrors of the Holocaust but know nothing of Leo Frank, Russian pograms, the forced conversions in Spain that generations after still did not protect their children from expulsion.
Christians in America are particularly close minded about antisemitism, blathering about how persecuted they are when they average synagogue faces more direct and violent threats than Christian churches can dream of.
Antisemitism in America is a pervasive and dangerous as antiblackness in policing. And yet we don’t talk about it or we talk about it like it’s just the Gestapo in 1944 and the occasional neo nazi.
“was about “man’s inhumanity to man” and said it involved “two White groups of people.””
So in essence she dismissed the import of racism by using that catch-all nonsense that “All Lives Matter”? Sounds familiar.
One of white supremacy’s most effective tools is Divide & Conquer, an insidious trap/deep pit. Whoopi Goldberg fell straight into it, and I kind of understand what she was trying to say. White Jews have passing privilege, but that doesn’t negate the reality of White Christians throughout the millennia who have seen Jews as a separate race. If I’d spent as much of my life as she has walking around in a Black skin, I might feel the same way. Has anyone read “How Jews became White Folks & What That Says about Race in America” by Karen Sacks? I just moved it up my TBR list and have a feeling it will help me gain a better understanding of this whole mess.
The world is not a gentle place; it’s a pretty savage place. And in terms of marginalization and atrocities, Jews, People of Color and other groups that have been enslaved, subject to genocide and other horrors share a level of generational and individualized trauma that can get in the way of being able to see past our own and our peoples’ own pain and suffering. We need to be gentle with ourselves and with others and it is helpful, if we can find it in ourselves in the midst of our own trauma (note: my stomach is knotting as I write this) to remember that about others in general and Whoopi in particular. It is this lens through which I choose to see her public apology and her comments on Colbert. She’s still processing what happened and likely will for some time to come.
Not all Jewish people are white, not in skin and not in ethnicity.
The Holocaust took the lives of northern african jews and middle eastern jews and not only European Jews as some believe. Non-European jews had to fight the Israeli government for this recognition.
Ugh that’s disappointing. Also I’ll admit as a non Jewish person I am a bit confused if jewish people consider themselves white or not (if they are not POC obviously). I think it’s confusing to outsiders because you can also convert to Judaism and obviously that wouldn’t affect your race and many people of Jewish decent appear white as well. It’s a race and religion and sometimes both I guess. I usually like Whoopi but this is bad.
as I understand, Jewish people consider themselves Jewish in race and religion, and will tell you that first. If pressed, they will identify as “white” or “Caucasian” while still maintaining that they are Jewish first and foremost. That’s been my experience and understanding, having been raised around many Jewish people, adjacent to a Jewish university etc etc. Anyone please correct me if I’m wrong.
I’m Jewish and my skin is definitely white, but I don’t identify as white (or any other color). White Supremacists want to kill us because we’re NOT white. We have armed guards at our synagogues and community centers and schools (Jewish Day Schools and afternoon/evening Hebrew school) in case someone decides to blow us up or shoot us. Hitler didn’t think of us as white. We’re only white when it’s a convenient way to justify hate. Otherwise we’re POC (dirty foreigners and dirty Semites) to justify the other “side’s” hatred and violence. It’s hard to be white and be the enemy (anti-Israel/anti-Jewish stance), when I’m also NOT WHITE and the enemy (anti-Jewish/anti-people with brown blood).
Couldn’t have said any of this better than you if I had tried.
Thanks for clarifying Yonati!
I never liked Whoopi and quite frankly hope she is fired for this. I remember her going hardcore to bat for Roman Polanski. She loves to stick her foot in her mouth and people just brush it under the rug for the most part. Maybe those will finally seal her fate.
@Jan90067 Great comment. I’d also like to point out that Jewish people have been targets for lynching in the US as well. The story of Leo Frank, a wealthy Jewish Factory owner who was lynched in Georgia in the 1920s comes to mind.
This is why Ossof’s win was such a big deal for Georgia. After Frank’s lynching, Jews fled the state in droves. I’m pretty sure I read that Atlanta had the largest Jewish community in the south at the time. The vast majority left the state in the aftermath.
Yes, you are absolutely correct @SarcasmQueen. Anytime you read about lynchings it is horrific, but what has always stuck with me about Leo Frank’s story is that the group of men who abducted and lynched him were not the “usual suspects” (lower class, poor white men), but were instead were highly connected an influential men — ex judges, an ex mayor, a former Governor of Georgia etc. No wonder the Jewish community fled.
My father flew bombing missions with the RCAF over Germany and North Africa in WWII. He was shot down by Rommel’s forces near Tobruk, and he and his crew spent 3 days in the scorching desert before being rescued by the RAF, just hours before an arm of Rommel’s ground troops would have found them. He lost many good friends and saw atrocities the likes of which he could never bring himself to speak about, but haunted him nevertheless.
So for Whoopi to make a case that the holocaust wasn’t race-based is insensitive and disrespectful to those whose lives were destroyed, to those who fought against Hitler, and the survivors and their families who have terrifying memories and intergenerational trauma to deal with. You can bet they all believe strongly that it was racism that spiraled out of control into genocide, they experienced it FIRST HAND so how dare she insist that it was “white on white” and “man’s inhumanity against man”. She should NEVER be allowed back on that fakakta show and it’s time to end The View. It accomplishes nothing meaningful or educational, it’s just a bunch of arrogant, squabbling women trying to out-shout each other.
Disgusting. I still can’t believe people actually watch that toxic show, but then again, look who has shows on Fox. I’m so sick of ignorance, stupidity, all of it. And for what? Religion? Shouldn’t be a gd part of anything just as race, just as age… How f*cking hard is it to respect people? All people? How f*cking hard is it to show humility? Grace? Concern? Empathy? I’m starting to realize too many simply can’t be taught. If there’s no desire to change, get comfortable people. Yelling and arguing is a complete waste.
We have to know our history. All of it. The bad is part of everyone’s past, and to ignore it, downplay it, make jokes about it, and change it feeds the social monster.
I hope she takes this time to truly educate herself.
The Holocaust absolutely 100% was about race. It was about purifying amd preserving the white race which is why their earliest targets were the disabled and LGBTQ folks because they believed they damaged the race. They also believed Jews damaged the white race, as did the Romani, Sinti, Slavic people, etc.
If it were about religion, than secular, non practicing Jews would not have been systematically rooted out and murdered alongside the religious.
Many of the earliest victims, the German Jews did not practice and had not in a generation or so. They were removed from their positions and later killed, even while baptized Christian or with a Christian parent who raised them in church.
This whole thing is a disaster. What she said initially was really mayo and ignorant, regardless of her intent. She rightfully apologized and ABC did what they felt was necessary to remedy the outrage without firing her outright. I think a Spotify should have suspended Joe Rogan for two weeks. Lot of people saying, some inadvertently, some very deliberately, really awful things. Strange volatile times we’re in where it seems the only remedy to the outrage is to shut people down completely.
*aargh, autocorrect, mean, not mayo.