Whoopi Goldberg blew it big time with her comment on “The View” on Monday that the Holocaust was not about race but “man’s inhumanity to man.” But even though she later doubled down on her misstatements during an interview with Stephen Colbert, it didn’t take her long to come out with a true apology: She had been wrong, downright inaccurate, but now she had learned.
Did that merit a two-week suspension by ABC News? OK, but the important issue is that Goldberg was sadly misinformed about both the Holocaust and how the idea of race was used by the Nazis, and then she realized it and spoke out about it. Most of us have similar lessons to learn about mass acts of violent hatred, and Goldberg’s wrongful statement is one model for how to go about changing our perceptions.
A great deal has been made of whether Goldberg was accurate in not identifying the Jewish people, an estimated 6 million of whom died under Nazi rule, as a race. She wouldn’t be the first to tangle with that complicated issue; it’s widely debated among scholars and within the Jewish community. Certainly, most (but not all) Jewish people are white and thus aren’t targeted for the color of their skin. Race is more of a social construct than a hard-and-fast reality, viewed differently by various people, though often one with terrible consequences for groups that are enslaved, attacked and mistreated. Certainly, the Nazis considered Jews to be a race, one to be targeted for annihilation.
