Whoopi Goldberg suspended for 2 weeks over Holocaust remarks

[Jilly_in_VA]

Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended for two weeks as co-host of The View because of what the head of ABC News called her "wrong and hurtful comments" about Jews and the Holocaust.

"While Whoopi has apologized, I've asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities," ABC News President Kim Godwin said in a statement posted Tuesday on Twitter.

The suspension came a day after Goldberg's comment during a discussion on The View that race was not a factor in the Holocaust. Goldberg apologized hours later and again on Tuesday's morning episode, but the original remark drew condemnation from several prominent Jewish leaders.

"My words upset so many people, which was never my intention," she said Tuesday morning. "I understand why now and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things."

Goldberg made her original comments during a discussion on the show Monday about a Tennessee school board's banning of Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Nazi death camps during World War II. She said the Holocaust was "not about race ... it's about man's inhumanity to other man."

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/01/1077502436/whoopi-goldberg-suspended-for-2-weeks-over-holocaust-remarks

[Jilly_in_VA]

2. Well

you could make an argument that, whether the Nazis considered the Jews, or the Romani people, for that matter, a "race" or not, many people consider them white, and an ethnicity rather than a separate race. We had this discussion a whole lot of years ago in my Hebrew class with the professor, who was himself an Egyptian Jew and indubitably a brown man (though not very brown). He argued for ethnicity and not race, saying that Semites, which include the Arabs, BTW, are Caucasian, and are technically an ethnicity and not a separate race. You can say the same about the Romani, who most anthropologists now believe originated in the Gujarati province of India. Indians are considered Caucasian also.

It's a technicality. And it is about humanity's inhumanity to each other, en fin.

And I know I'm going to get pilloried for this.

[Sympthsical]

5. Not going to pillory

The problem is - and one Whoopi's run into - is that modern construction of race in American social discourse centers quite a bit on skin color. Whoopi clearly sees race through the lens of skin color.

However, that's an incredibly Amerocentric way of looking at these things, so applying it to the dynamics of Germany and the Holocaust was just marinating in historical ignorance. European nations commonly viewed ethnicities and sometimes and even nationalities as racial groups. If you were a distinct ethnic group, you were a different race.

And of course, this carried right on over to America. Whiteness as it is commonly referred and understood was a WASP construction. The Irish, Italians, and Jews were not a part of this whiteness for a long time. They were considered inferior races of people. The Jews were absolutely considered a different race at the time in Germany. Racial purity was very much the point.

But because Whoopi sees light-skinned as being all of a piece, well, it's just white people being shitty to white people.

And this is a very us thing. If you go to Eastern Asian countries, for example, enjoy that mess. Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc. They often consider themselves separate races. The racism you see among these groups towards each other is just amazing.

Meanwhile in America, "Aren't they all Asian? Same race? Eyes, skin and hair color. All the same." So it is with white people. "White is white."

This "only skin color matters" construct is a terrible one as well. It's how we got that "Only white people can be racist" garbage that hasn't worked or helped in any capacity. If skin color is the only thing that matters, then it's the only problem worth addressing.

I can say, living in the extremely diverse Bay Area, lots of groups hate lots of other groups, and it's alllll based on racism. Recent anti-Asian violence ain't all white folks.

Whoopi was just being ignorant as all hell. I've said it already, but people have been shit-canned for saying a lot less about the Holocaust.

[Budi]

4. Yet all the offensive remarks by Megan McCain & Elizabeth Hasselbeck went on unchallenged

Double standard for White women & Black women?

Offensive is offensive. Just depends who's doing the offending.
I'm ok calling bullshit.
👎

[Sympthsical]

6. Did either or them minimize the Holocaust?

And you're trying to use race to make this complaint?

That was a swing. I will absolutely give you that. If you want to be egregious, swing for the fences, I say.

[Srkdqltr]

7. And how much white is white and how much black is black?

A lot of black people have some white mix. And some white have some black mix. Obama is probably about half if his DNA was known. A lot of people would be surprised at their mix.
Seems to me race is a really stupid criteria for hatred. But that's just me. Have your DNA done before choosing sides.

[Jilly_in_VA]

8. Just as an example

My adopted daughter describes herself as "the whitest Black person you'll ever meet." If you see her with a bunch of white people, you'd think she's white, but if you see her with some Black people, you'd know. She's very fair-skinned, with brown eyes and nearly straight medium brown hair. Her partner is half white and half indigenous, an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek tribe. With brown hair and eyes, he could pass for anything. Their daughter has blonde hair and brown eyes. Go figure. She could be anything. She's an American.

I seem to recall that when some dude tried to establish a reich wing "all white" town in ND somewhere (the locals didn't want him or his people anywhere near them), it developed that he had some Black ancestry and he was not heard from after that.

[moondust]

9. Is "racism" the same as "ethnic cleansing"?

Last edited Wed Feb 2, 2022, 07:23 PM - Edit history (1)

I think many people--and particularly blacks and white supremacists--would tend to think of the holocaust as "ethnic cleansing" through genocide rather than "racism." I doubt the KKK and lynch mobs in the Old South put much thought into the "ethnicity" of their victims even if they knew the meaning of the word.

In that rather esoteric context Whoopi probably didn't deserve suspension.