You probably already heard: Whoopi went Whoopsie on The View, and claimed the Holocaust was not about race.
The View” moderator Whoopi Goldberg has provoked outrage for repeatedly asserting that “the Holocaust isn’t about race.”
Her 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.
Goldberg’s ignorant comments are low-hanging fruit, which have already been addressed by all and sundry, so I am not really going to spend too much time on them except to point out how she should have taken her own advice:
What I would like to focus on is how it she pointed out that the ADL “educated” her about her mistake. Just last week, we were reminded how being educated about “racism” by the ADL is, to paraphrase Johnny Lee, looking for truth in all the wrong places.
The US-based advocacy group the Anti-Defamation League has drawn criticism on social media after screenshots of their definition of Racism went viral on Twitter.
According to the ADL, racism can be defined as “The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”
This entry on their website, which according to internet archives was updated in July 2020, used to contain a more traditional definition of racism. It said: “Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.
“Racial separatism is the belief, most of the time based on racism, that different races should remain segregated and apart from one another.”
The edit, which was seemingly made nearly two years ago, was noticed by American Twitter users who took exception to the change. The story was reported by right-wing news site the Daily Wire, who accused the ADL of “going woke.”
According to the ADL’s woke definition of “racism”, Goldberg was not far off; Hitler’s extermination of Jews was not about racism since Jews are not considered “people of color” – at least not to the ADL itself. I know this, because they have spoken of ‘Jews of color‘, implying that there is such a thing as ‘Jews not-of-color.’
I have noticed the ADL’s downward slide for a while now; just last month I pointed out their lame response to Zahra Billoo’s antisemitic incitement against US Jews. Whoopi-gate is another reminder that they are past their used-by date.
