Let’s stop whooping on Whoopi
As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I grew up in a Jewish home. In the late 20th century, this meant you learned about the history and violent tragedy of the Holocaust, about the fact that 6 million Jews were killed. We learned that the Nazi regime in Germany considered Jews to be a “race” and that they were determined to eradicate the Jewish race. When people view Jews as a distinct race which is inferior to others, this is referred to as "racial antisemitism." In my religious education, we practiced the mantra “Never Again,” referring to a constant retelling of the Holocaust story to remind people that this horror should never happen again.
Besides learning about the Holocaust in religious school, my history teachers spoke about it in public school. In 2002, when my family was living in England, I took my children to visit the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. In 2005, when we had moved back to the US, I took my children to visit the US Holocaust Museum on a visit to the Washington DC area. During all of these experiences, I recognized and understood that the Nazi regime had done horrific things to try to eradicate what they referred to as the Jewish race.
I’ve never considered being Jewish as being part of a race. I’ve observed race as being a tricky word. It subdivides our community into different subsets, and often these subsets perceive one group of people as inferior to another. The term "white supremacy," for example, refers to the philosophy that whites are better than any other race. When I worked with the US Census in 2020, we asked the optional question of race of the people we interviewed. The people had the opportunity to respond (with the expectation that they were being honest) with the race that they were born into. There was a long list of options including: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. The US Census Bureau asks these questions to understand populations and help to make policy decisions around civil rights. Nowhere on the list does it say “Jewish.” Race and ethnicity are considered separate and distinct identities; this logic explains why Jewish is not on the list.
I do notice that race is often considered a way to mark one group as inferior to another. I see how race becomes a “caste," a way to marginalize a group of people. I also see how race can be cultural. I don’t want to turn race into one giant melting pot of everyone, making the uniqueness of communities disappear. For me, race does play an important role in our society. That said, I focus on the social justice of not ranking races the best I can.
Getting back to the Holocaust. It may be over, but the atrocities of efforts to try and annihilate communities still continue. While parts of the world may be working to acknowledge and educate about the Holocaust, other parts of the world seem to want to diminish the education. In early January, a school board in Tennessee voted to ban the book Maus from their curriculum, a graphic novel about the Holocaust. The reasoning was that the book was too violent for the eighth grade students.
Many news outlets had comments on this decision. Many felt that the decision was a way to water down and soften the reality of what happened during the Holocaust. One of the news outlets was the TV Show “The View." When they chose to discuss the banning of the book, they spoke to the history of the Holocaust. Whoopi Goldberg spoke up. She said, “It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity against each other. This conflict was white against white.” Suddenly, media was in an uproar. How dare Whoopi say that the Holocaust was not about race? Did she know that the Nazi regime said they wanted to eradicate the Jewish race? Apparently not. As a result, she was banned from being on the show for 2 weeks.
Shortly after the episode aired, Whoopi apologized for her remark. She said that she should have shared that the Holocaust was about BOTH the inhumanity of people against each other and the attempt to destroy the Jewish race. She had understood that race was defined as something you could see.
Personally, I feel for Whoopi. Yes, in the detail of historical facts, her statement was wrong. It comes from a space of ignorance that statements like “confederate soldiers were fighting for the US” come from. History gets muddled and distorted all of the time. To me, the challenge is not to dismiss and admonish those who are incorrect but to educate and help people to understand the truth. Shaming people does no good in helping them to understand. I appreciate Whoopi’s apology. As a person of color, she has certainly had her fair share of misrepresentation and racism thrown at her. The fact that she acknowledged what was incorrect in her statement, and she has a desire to learn should be enough. Still, even after her apology, articles were published, videos were streaming, all admonishing Whoopi.
In an era of Black Lives Matter, I am a white person trying to recognize my own racial biases and wanting to move forward in a more equal and fair way of recognizing others. I appreciate my privilege of being able to say, “I didn’t know that” and “I am sorry that I did that” as I navigate in my learning process. I don’t see the value in lashing out at others when they too are learning. Personally, I don’t watch “The View.” I could care less about the show. I do want to respect the actors however. While Whoopi’s apology should be a regular behavior in all of us, can we at least have some compassion? I know that’s what I would want if I were in her shoes.
