NEW YORK (JTA) – In an awkward exchange with her co-hosts on “The View,” actress and producer Whoopi Goldberg claimed that “the Holocaust isn’t about race,” but rather about “man’s inhumanity to man.”
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The panel was discussing a Tennessee school board’s removal of the Holocaust book “Maus” from its curriculum earlier this month. All five co-hosts opposed the board’s decision, saying that the acclaimed graphic memoir should be taught in classrooms; but Goldberg differed strongly from her colleagues on the question of exactly why the Holocaust should be taught to students.
“If you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it,” Goldberg said, before elaborating that “these [Jews and Nazis] are two white groups of people.”
Co-host Joy Behar objected, arguing that Nazis “considered Jews a different race.” Guest co-host Ana Navarro asserted that “it’s about white supremacy, it’s about going after Jews and Gypsies.” But Goldberg continued to speak.
“The minute you turn it into race, you go down this alley,” she continued, as the show’s producers began playing music as a cue to cut to commercials.
Sparks fly as The View panel confronts Whoopi after she says "the Holocaust isn't about race. No. It's not about race."
"Well, the considered Jews a different race," Joy Behar says."But it's about white supremacy. It's about going after Jews and Gypsies," Ana Navarro adds. pic.twitter.com/GZwZSi2qXi
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 31, 2022
Goldberg’s comments come amid a larger nationwide reckoning on Holocaust and race education, as many conservative activists have fought to restrict the teaching of race-related topics in schools, while some American Jews have expressed discomfort around identifying themselves as simply “white.” In his writings and speeches that would ultimately come to articulate his mass-extermination plans, Adolf Hitler repeatedly referred to Jews as a race rather than a religious group.
Goldberg, born Caryn Elaine Johnson, has no Jewish ancestry, but adopted her stage name to be deliberately Jewish-sounding, in part because she has said she personally identifies with Judaism. She told a London audience in 2016, “I just know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don’t go to temple, but I do remember the holidays.” In 2016, she designed a Hanukkah sweater for Lord & Taylor.
Oh my goodness. She is quite a nutjob!
Imagine if I said this: I think I’ll change my last name to Brown. I just know I am black, inside. I don’t speak like one or anything, but I identify as black!
Whoopi would be yelling cultural appropriation! Why has nobody called her out on this???
I was wondering why she is so popular. She doesn’t even sound smart. She is defining race as color, and that’s ridiculous. She speaks with fluency, qualifying her for media. But intelligence is lacking, and she proves that often. She will bite the dust one day, disgracing herself.
Well, I don’t think slavery was about race, it was about plantation owners needing help.
How does that work for you Ms. Goldberg?
She’s just a wannabe.
Will she be fired, or does that only happen to conservatives who make racially insensitive remarks?
VIN is wrong. Whoopi is right. The only ones who called Jews a race are the yemach shmom nazis, who called us an inferior race. There are Jews who are white ( a race), some who are black (a race), but never are Jews referred to as a ‘race’. And she’s also right in saying it’s a question of man’s inhumanity to man.
“Her sickening comments” ? VIN, you are wrong. period.
I think everyone is missing the bigger statement she made, that racism isn’t about race, it’s about how people treat each other, the people who come after blacks, could come after whites too.
She is correct, although her word choice is poor.
She isn’t playing down the holocaust, or minimize what they did. She is just proving that brutality isn’t about race (according to some there are only 4 different races, and according to them, Jews and Germans are from the same race).
While she said it out of ignorance (especially Black ignorance of how they view Jews) it still sounded terrible. Like it or not Blacks view Jews as White and you can’t really blame them.
Hitler yemach shemom killed African Americans whites Jews all alike .
It wasent about race
She apologized
I see she has apologized.
Technically, it was not about race but rather about religion.
Much ado about nothing.
Whoopi Goldberg, being Black, looks at race as being either Black or White (maybe yellow for Asians). Therefore from her vantage point Jews are White.Thus, the Holocaust was White vs White. As such, it doesn’t fall into the category of racism. It is merely a question of semantics and in no way was it meant to minimize the Holocaust.