Actress Whoopi Goldberg found herself in hot water last week when she made comments that got her suspended from The View for two weeks. What did she say that was so offensive? She said that the Holocaust was not about race. It was not a stutter or a woeful misstep. She repeated it three more times shortly afterwards. Goldberg said that the Holocaust was not about race, but rather about man's inhumanity to man. Someone should have told Hitler.
It is true that Jews are not strictly a race. Jewish identity is more complicated. I should know. I was not born Jewish. Judaism works a lot like U.S. citizenship. The U.S. Constitution states that you can either be a U.S. citizen by being born as a U.S. citizen (Fourteenth Amendment) or going through the naturalization process (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4). It works similarly with Judaism. Either you are born Jewish because one of your parents (traditionally the mother) is Jewish. Alternatively, you can convert to Judaism. Plus, the idea that Jews can be of any ethnicity, whether it be white, black, Asian, or Latino, should dispel the notion of Judaism being a strictly ethnical concept.
While Judaism is not about race, the Holocaust was decidedly about race. Hitler's goal was to build a society of the Übermensch. Yes, the Nazi regime ultimately systematically murdered gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, and political dissidents along with the Jews. At the same time, the group of people that Hitler despised and targeted the most was the Jewish people. The Nazi regime started its racist policies by first and foremost targeting the Jews. It used a pseudoscientific argument to codify in German law the false idea that the Jews were biologically inferior. The Reich Citizenship Law, enacted in 1935, changed the definition of the Jewish people from a religious and cultural community to that of a race that was strictly defined by birth and blood. The Law for Protection of German Blood and German Honor banned marriage between Jewish Germans and non-Jewish Germans. These two laws became the basis of the Nuremberg Laws, which was the beginning of racial antisemitism of the Nazi regime that led to Hitler pursuing his dream of systematically exterminating the Jewish people. Furthermore, it is clear that Whoopi Goldberg did not read the book Maus, the topic being discussed on The View that day which led up to her inflammatory comments, because the epigraph of the book has a despicable quote from Hitler saying, "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human."
What compounded the historical illiteracy of Whoopi Goldberg was that by saying the Holocaust was "about man's inhumanity to man" is that she refused to give Jews any special identity. From her limited perspective, it was just an instance of "white-on-white violence." Goldberg could see nothing unique or different about Jewish identity, or could even perceive Jews as minorities. It is as if she were erasing the centuries of persecution and oppression the Jewish people have endured. As actress Debra Massing pointed out, Whoopi Goldberg has "All Lives Matter[-ed]" the Jewish people.
One could easily be mad at Whoopi Goldberg. She opened her mouth and stuck her foot right in there with her misunderstanding of the Holocaust and Jew-hatred. On the other hand, she is not alone in her ignorance of the Holocaust. Holocaust education is not what I would call great. Only 19 U.S. states require Holocaust education. In 2020, a 50-state survey of millennial Americans showed that 63 percent did not even know that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. More disturbingly, 11 percent of millennials and those of Generation Z thought that the Jews caused the Holocaust. A similar lack of Holocaust knowledge came from a U.K.-based survey in 2021.
We have to remember that she is viewing the concept of race from her experience as a 65-year-old African-American woman. From her point of view, racism only happens when black people and other people of color are being oppressed by white people, which sounds a lot like critical race theory (see my criticism of CRT here). She could not fathom that racism could also be one group of white people oppressing another group of predominantly white people that the first group of white people has deemed racially inferior. It is ironic considering that Goldberg essentially used the now-woke Anti-Defamation League's [ADL] previous definition of racism, which was defined as "the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed hierarchy that privileges white people." The ADL has since changed their definition of racism, but the irony of the ADL's wokeness does not escape me.
Leaving the politics of something as CRT aside, I can say that it is effortless to view an idea, concept, event, or occurrence strictly through the lens of your experience. However, that is limiting not simply because Goldberg's understanding of race is predated by centuries of Jews existing. It is because the world around us is so much more than what we experience. This is why having diversity, whether that of race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, philosophy, or political persuasion, is important. We learn from other experiences and improve our understanding of the world by conversing with those who are different from us.
With that being said, what should be the fate of Whoopi Goldberg? Should she be fired? It is tricky to know how I feel on this one. In 2013, I was okay if A&E, a private entity, decided to fire Phil Robertson for his offensive remarks about gay people. Part of being free is being accountable for what we say and do. Our actions have consequences, both good and bad. ABC would be in the right to fire Whoopi Goldberg from The View, particularly if Goldberg's remarks were a violation of her contract or if those comments did damage to ABC.
On the other hand, I highly value free speech. Freedom of speech is one of the redeeming features of American society. She should be free to express herself, much like comedian Dave Chappelle, author J.K. Rowling, podcaster Joe Rogan, or actress Gina Carano should have been before ABC's Disney decided to fire Carano. Plus, we as a society have gone off the rails in recent years regarding what is deemed offensive. The reaction of those who want Whoopi Goldberg fired is part of what makes cancel culture so infuriating. It is easier to go into mob mentality and throw stones at someone who said something offensive than it is to forgive. Yes, Whoopi said something daft. I do not think she said something out of malice because she at least acknowledged how horrible the Holocaust was. I think Goldberg's comments were straight-up ignorance.
More to the point, Whoopi Goldberg should be educated so she can have an opportunity to learn from her mistake and better understand the nature of anti-Semitism. Too much of our society has become too polarized, too quick to judge those who are not of the same political tribe, and too stuck in echo chambers to reach out to those who disagree. Until we can reverse the trends on political discourse in this nation, we will continue to go in this illiberal, un-American direction.
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