Whoopi Goldberg apologizes for saying Holocaust 'isn't about race'

[left-of-center2012]

Whoopi Goldberg has apologized for comments she made Monday about the Holocaust in which she claimed during an episode of ABC's "The View" that it was not "about race."
"It's about man's inhumanity to man," Goldberg said. The comments drew some pushback from her co-hosts on the daytime talk program and backlash online.

As part of her apology on Monday night, Goldberg quoted Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League as saying that "the Holocaust was about the Nazi's systemic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race."

Goldberg wrote she should have said during her comments on the show that the Holocaust "is about both" race and "man's inhumanity to man."

"The Jewish People around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver," Goldberg wrote in a message posted on social media late Monday. "I'm sorry for the hurt I have caused."

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/592197-whoopi-goldberg-apologizes-for-saying-holocaust-isnt-about-race

[Skittles]

1. this is how it's done right

if you fuck up, just OWN it

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

4. Yes, that was class!!

[Skittles]

6. people can be forgiving if an apology is quick and sincere

it pains me to see people doubling down before they are forced to apologize

[JoeOtterbein]

2. Doesn't Whoopi understand that...

...only old white men can get away with saying the words; 'isn't about race'. (sarcasm)

[Deuxcents]

3. I think her heart was in the right place

But her delivery was not clear.. I’m sure her words today will prove it.

[UTUSN]

7. On COLBERT she dug herself deeper

*** ON EDIT: Feel I've gotta say I saw most of her COLBERT on this topic, didn't see The View, and arrived at my take from what I saw, then Searched for reporting on her COLBERT content, and this below is all i found. I don't parrot from whatever the sources are.


*****QUOTE*****

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10462787/I-think-race-Whoopi-tries-justify-saying-Holocaust-not-race.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490

As a black person I think of race as being something that I can see': Whoopi Goldberg tries to justify saying that the Holocaust was not about race - after issuing apology claiming she 'stands corrected'

.... I feel, being black, when we talk about race it's a very different thing to me.

'So I said I thought the Holocaust wasn't about race. ....

'But I thought it was a salient discussion because as a black person I think of race as being something that I can see.'

Goldberg said that, if the Ku Klux Klan were approaching, she would run but a Jewish friend would be safe, and insisted the Nazis weren't racist, but rather evil. ....

*****UNQUOTE*****

[Behind the Aegis]

8. What a shame.

Just another example of someone being ahistorical and not understanding actual history. It is also, IMO, an example of diminishing the crimes committed against Jews.

[UTUSN]

11. She has gotten herself in jams periodically. This one surprised me. Thanks

for taking this as posted. I was expecting (not from you) the usual calling me a wingnut parrot or attacking the source as wingnut.

[Skittles]

14. er....say what???

not sure what to think of this, seems very - well, myopic

[Klaralven]

16. In the 21st Century US context she's right. In the early 20th Century context, she's wrong.

In the 21st Century US, both Jews and Germans are "white", so racial genocide between them is illogical.

In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century Europe, concepts of race were more similar to what we currently think of as nationality or nationality groups. Germans, English, Russians, Jews were considered different races. Or Germans, Scandinavians and English would be lumped together as Aryans, while Russians, Bulgarians and Poles would be lumped together as Slavs.

Prior to the 19th Century, race/nationality was not as salient in Europe. Most of the geography was ruled by the Hapsburg, Russian, French and Ottoman empires, which provided a thin layer of federalism below which local nobles ruled ethnolinguistic communities with a lot of independence. Religious differences were likely to get you killed, but race was not.

[Solly Mack]

22. Showing she knows very little about the KKK.

It is documented historical fact that the KKK attacks Jewish people too.

[BeckyDem]

31. +1.

The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the oldest and most infamous of American hate groups. Although Black Americans have typically been the Klan’s primary target, it also has attacked Jews, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community and, until recently, Catholics.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan


She has a platform b/c she is a celebrity, but substance is not what they pay her or the others for.

[Solly Mack]

32. The klan threatened to burn my grandparent's home down when my mom was a young child.

My mom's family fled during the night to a new location.

I don't view the KKK only through the prism of what it did to my family. I see it for what it is has done to all the people they attack and kill. I see them for everything they do and believe. For everything they have done - and I condemn them for all of it.

[BeckyDem]

33. Yes. Destroying anyone who they believed was a threat.

Their violent actions left a mark on many levels. Why Whoopi doubled down on Colbert I can't say, but I am not surprised.

[Caliman73]

25. Those gentleman killed in Philidelphia Mississippi....

Two were White Jews and one was Black. The KKK is, or at least was against Black people, Jews, AND Catholics. Certainly, having White skin allows you to hide a little more,

The concept of "race" was developed as a separation and valuation based on skin color AND cultural traits.

Jews were definitely described as an "inferior race". They have been labeled as a "mongrel race" and "subhuman".

This is the problem with the concept of "race" and the concept of "White". The perception of who is White changes based on the desires of the dominant group. The idea of "race" is also nebulous and changes.

[wildheart]

36. To be fair

The Colbert interview was recorded prior to her apology.

[questionseverything]

40. That kind of makes it worse

Shows she never intended to apologize but as the day went on, realized she had to

[wildheart]

43. I didn't see it that way

It would be worse if the colbert "tone deaf" interview was AFTER her apology. Obviously she realized she is wrong.

[elias7]

9. With a name like Goldberg, you'd think she'd understand Jewish ethnicity

[Behind the Aegis]

10. When it comes to Jews and our history, culture, and lives, myopia is endemic.

Some things never change!

[left-of-center2012]

13. Apparently there's no Jewish heritage in her background

According to Wikipedia.
I'm on my phone now so can't add the link.

Also her real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson.

[left-of-center2012]

12. According to Wikipedia

Whoopi's real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson.

[wildheart]

37. from wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoopi_Goldberg

She has stated that her stage forename ("Whoopi&quot was taken from a whoopee cushion: "When you're performing on stage, you never really have time to go into the bathroom and close the door. So if you get a little gassy, you've got to let it go. So people used to say to me, 'You're like a whoopee cushion.' And that's where the name came from."[15]

About her stage surname, she claimed in 2011, "My mother did not name me Whoopi, but Goldberg is my name—it's part of my family, part of my heritage, just like being black", and "I just know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don't go to temple, but I do remember the holidays."[16] She has stated that "people would say 'Come on, are you Jewish?' And I always say 'Would you ask me that if I was white? I bet not.'"[16] One account recalls that her mother, Emma Johnson, thought the family's original surname was "not Jewish enough" for her daughter to become a star.[16] Researcher Henry Louis Gates Jr. found that all of Goldberg's traceable ancestors were African Americans, that she had no known German or Jewish ancestry, and that none of her ancestors were named Goldberg.[12] Results of a DNA test, revealed in the 2006 PBS documentary African American Lives, traced part of her ancestry to the Papel and Bayote people of modern-day Guinea-Bissau. Her admixture test indicates that she is of 92 percent sub-Saharan African origin and of 8 percent European origin.[17]

[left-of-center2012]

38. From wiki

"none of her ancestors were named Goldberg"

[wildheart]

39. She took the name

because she thought it would advance her career. And then she claimed to be Jewish, while not practicing the faith because she doesn't believe in man made religions. That doesn't even give her the "out" of having Jewish heritage, because she has none.

Someone else said, "cultural appropriation" Seems that way to me.

[Jose Garcia]

29. Cultural appropriation

[Hekate]

34. I thought she took the name of some old Vaudevillian as a joke, but there's more...

The Whoopi part is definitely a personal joke — her friends said she kept passing gas like a whoopie cushion. The rest of it, who knows. The woman is a comedian, or started as one.

Actors.

https://www.thelist.com/422334/the-real-reason-whoopi-goldberg-changed-her-name/

[demmiblue]

15. Her appearance on Colbert:

[Hortensis]

17. To Hitler's Nazis, Europe had many inferior races, especially

the eastern European ones, that he felt should be enslaved to serve the German master race.

Fact is, European Jews were NOT a separate race, any more than Danes or French were. In that Whoopie was correct; however, some have always insisted on hating them as a separate race, not just religiously or culturally, so that "racism" is a big part of what happened even if no more real than claiming redheads or Catholics were separate races.

All the sociologically identified races include Jewish members. There are Nigerian and Chinese Jews for instance because some people in China and various parts of Africa, including Nigeria, are Jewish.

Scientists, who've now examined this at the genetic, molecular, elemental level, say race is a social construct that is not supported by scientifically identified differences. Yes, people look different. Big whoopie. Cultures and individual attitudes though,...

[Klaralven]

18. "race is a social construct" hasn't held up very well given DNA clustering algorithms

And given the progress in ancient DNA analysis.

Molecular classification works for humans as well as for any other animals.

[Hortensis]

19. New information has lead to different interpretations, and

development of new terminology and definitions, but science keeps scientists agreeing far more than the imaginings, historic realities, and preferences of various nonscientific groups. As usual.

[PatSeg]

21. I always considered Jewish as a religion, not a race

and all the Jewish people I've known were white. I never thought of them as a separate race.

I understand what Whoopi was trying to say, but perhaps she did so inartfully. For many people, it seems that the word "race" has become synonymous with different. Clearly the Holocaust was about "man's inhumanity to man" and I have no doubt that if there had been no Jews in Germany, Hitler would have lashed out at another group of people to unite Germans in hatred of the "other". Being Hitler considered Jews a different race, then obviously it was about race in the eyes of the German people in the 1930s and 1940s, but essentially I believe it was about "man's inhumanity to man". We've seen this happen throughout history

Whoopi probably should have just omitted the reference about race, but I can see that as a black woman, her definition of "race" might not be the same as other people's. It is really a difficult conversation to have, as no matter what we say or how we phrase it, someone is bound to be offended or hurt.

Sadly people tend to focus on our differences and unfortunately, they will always find them.

[Mosby]

24. Judaism is an ethno-religious tradition

With religious, ethnic and cultural components. We are a tribe, basically.

A lot of Americans have a myopic view of racism, they consider it as a simple dichotomy between white people and PoC. Thats not the reality around the world now, or in the past. Just look at India or Korea.

Interestingly, most "white" Jews here and in Europe are at least 50% Levantine genetically, making them PoC like their Mizrahi cousins.

[Klaralven]

26. Levantines are close to Europeans and distant from sub-Saharan Africans

Moving on, Levantines and Iraqis share the same Neanderthal signals as Eurasians, the team found. Arabians on the other hand have less Neanderthal DNA.

The reason apparently lies in origins. Levantines have more ancestry (than Arabians) from Europe and Anatolia. The Arabians have more ancestry (than Levantines) from Africans, who didn’t mix with Neanderthals, and from Natufians, who were the prehistoric inhabitants of the Levant, including Israel.

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/genomic-study-levantines-and-arabians-have-different-origins-1.10084582

So both Levantines and Europeans have large amounts of DNA derived from Anatolia and the regions south of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. European hunter-gatherer populations were largely swamped out by migrating farmers from Anatolia who came through the Balkans and up the Danube valley.

[PatSeg]

28. That's interesting about the genetics

As DNA testing becomes more prevalent, a whole lot of people are finding out they are not necessarily who they thought they were.

[Hortensis]

35. :) Yes, religion and/or ethnicity. A typical racist antisemitic story

Hitler would not have liked was that his grandmother had been impregnated by a traveling Jewish peddler, or one of the Rothschilds in another version. Of course his enemies spread that to smear him as Jewish, but an even more extreme version is that Jewish semen doesn't just defile the woman but somehow permanently takes over her body so that she becomes racially Jewish.

Today's racists have nothing on those of the past.

I'm sure you're 100% right that Jews were just the favorite of many reviled targets and if they went poof! another would have been evil hate #1. Slavs of some type or another probably. I'm sure Hitler's intense racism was a tool, but also there are plenty of indications all things race were also an obsession.

Poor Whoopi. Of course these days "race" automatically means black (versus white) to most, can't escape it. Except for other races who might think their issues deserve wider consideration, but they're mostly out of luck. In any case, I don't think most people care nearly as much as those who care a lot imagine, those who care at all. The opposite of hate isn't love, after all, it's, "What are we doing this weekend?"

[treestar]

20. There were another six million people murdered

Some not based on race - homosexuals, people with disabilities and other races, such as gypsies. At times it seems these victims were forgotten.

They thought they were the master race, so it was mostly race, but even amongst their own race, they found people to kill.

[PatSeg]

23. And Hitler hated the Polish people as well

who he viewed as inferior. He did everything he could to destroy their culture in an attempt to humiliate and undermine the will of the Polish people. Hitler's capacity for death and destruction was horrifying.

[Klaralven]

27. DOCUMENTING NUMBERS OF VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST AND NAZI PERSECUTION

lhttps://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution

The larger non-Jewish categories are Soviet civilians, Soviet POWs, and Polish civilians, which together total about 10 million.

[rogue emissary]

30. Good, she was wrong.

[budkin]

41. Utterly embarassing

It's literally about race. I'm glad she apologized but JFC.