Sophia Michaels
Looks like Whoopi Goldberg didn’t learn from the backlash Kanye West has faced for his antisemitism. Nor from the reaction to her previous “hurtful” holocaust comment.
In a recent interview with The Sunday Times, Goldberg repeated her previously incendiary comment that the Holocaust “wasn’t originally” about race. Since the interview, Jewish leaders have denounced Goldberg’s “ignorant” words.
“My best friend said, ‘Not for nothing is there no box on the census for the Jewish race. So that leads me to believe that we’re probably not a race,’ ” Goldberg said in the interview, insisting that Nazis had targeted Jewish people for “physical attributes” as opposed to racial ones.
“Nazis saw Jews as a race,” the reporter told Goldberg, to which The View host responded, “Yes, but that’s the killer, isn’t it? The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?”
Goldberg made similar comments on The View back in January, which led to a two-week suspension from the show at the time. (A rep for The View did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment, nor did a rep for Goldberg.)
The Sunday Times interview was immediately met with backlash online, including from Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who condemned Goldberg’s comments in a Twitter thread Tuesday.
“Yet again, #WhoopiGoldberg’s comments about the Holocaust and race are deeply offensive and incredibly ignorant,” Greenblatt wrote. “When she made similar comments earlier this year, we explained how the Nazi regime was inherently racist.”
“Whoopi’s comments show a complete lack of awareness of the multiethnic, multiracial makeup of the Jewish community,” he added. “She needs to apologize immediately and actually commit to educating herself on the true nature of #antisemitism.”
Soon after the publication of the Sunday Times interview, the Auschwitz Memorial shared a screengrab of a letter from Adolf Hitler in 1919, where he specifically wrote, “Jews are definitely a race” and described Jewish people as an “alien race.”
“Stop claiming the Holocaust wasn’t about race,” wrote David Harris, the former CEO of the American Jewish Council, sharing Aushwitz Memorial’s tweet. “It was all about race. Please get a grip & move on.”
Back in February, ABC News president Kim Godwin suspended Goldberg for her “wrong and hurtful comments” about the holocaust. “I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments,” Godwin wrote.
During an episode of The View the previous month, Goldberg insisted that the “Holocaust wasn’t about race” while the hosts had a discussion about a Tennessee school district’s decision to ban Maus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel centering on the horrific experiences of a Holocaust survivor.
After the backlash, Goldberg apologized on her now-deleted Twitter account. “The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waver,” Goldberg wrote at the time. “I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused. Written with my sincerest apologies.”
