“The View” co-hosts barely acknowledged that Whoopi Goldberg was missing from the table Wednesday.
In the first show since the long-time host was suspended Tuesday night for controversial comments she made about the Holocaust this week, Joy Behar opened the episode with just a quick mention of the absence.
“You all saw the news. Whoopi will be back here in two weeks,” Behar said. “OK.”
The hosts, including Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin and conservative guest co-host Tara Setmayer, then immediately moved on to talking about Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s upcoming closed-media speech to the Federalist Society on Friday.
The controversy came about on Monday’s show during a conversation about “Maus,” Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about the Holocaust that has been banned by a Tennessee school.
“Let’s be truthful about it because Holocaust isn’t about race,” Goldberg said. “It’s not about race. It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”
“But it’s about white supremacists going after Jews,” co-host Ana Navarro responded.
“But these are two white groups of people!” Goldberg said. “The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white, Jews, it’s each other.”
Goldberg, 66, met immediate backlash, including from the Anti-Defamation League, the U.S. Holocaust Museum and the Auschwitz Memorial.
In a statement that night, Goldberg apologized for “the hurt that I have caused.”
“The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver,” she wrote.
But on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” the same day, Goldberg reiterated that as a Black woman, race is “a very different thing to me.”
“I think of race as being something that I can see. So I see you and know what race you are,” she said. “I thought it was more about man’s inhumanity to man … But people were very angry and said, ‘No, no, we are a race.’ I felt differently. I respect everything everyone is saying to me.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, joined “The View” on Tuesday to further educate Goldberg and her co-hosts.
“There is no question that the Holocaust was about race,” Greenblatt said. “That is how the Nazis saw it as they sought the systematic annihilation of the Jewish people across continents, across countries, with deliberate and ruthless cruelty.”
In a memo to staff Tuesday, ABC News president Kimberly Godwin said she “appreciate(d) their conversation and his acknowledgement of Whoopi’s efforts.”
“Whoopi has shown through her actions over many years that she understands the horrors of the Holocaust and she started today’s show with that recognition,” she said.
“But words matter and we must be cognizant of the impact our words have.”
But some have questioned whether a suspension is helpful, rather than continuing the conversation.
“Mandate her to spend time at the US Holocaust Museum in DC to learn history,” tweeted Abraham Foxman, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Wednesday. “Don’t punish her — educate her. All my professional life I advocated that it is more important to change minds hearts (than) to punish them.”
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