Whoopi Goldberg: Holocaust Wasn't About Race

She has since apologized, but how can someone in the 21st Century say what she said?

I mean, it's good she apologized, but this was still pretty bad. Her attitude was basically "some white people were being bad to some other white people".

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/31/entertainment/whoopi-goldberg-the-view-holocaust-race-cec/index.html

On one hand, it's woefully ignorant.

On the other, if Somalis were killing Jamaicans, would most white people see that as racial thing, or as "black on black" violence?

Related: I have a friend in her 30s that refers to herself as "mixed race" because one of her parents was born in Ethiopia and the other in Eritrea. Would you classify her as such?

Her statement is certainly ignorant of the non-whites who were also killed in the Holocaust.

But in terms of Nazis primarily executing Jews, isn't that more about religion? Not that it excuses her statement, it was still largely about the Nazis claiming racial and cultural superiority, but there were other aspects of those they executed (religion, people with disabilities, sexual orientation, communists, etc.).

I think it all comes down to how one defines race.

She definitely should have thought that comment out before stating it, but, as Fisherman's Worf says above, if we are to distinguish "black on black crime, this is essentially white on white crime.

The US government allowed for the extermination almost 100 million indigenous people, not to mention the estimated 2 +/- million Africans that didn't survive the middle passage. Then add in the 10 +/- million Africans who had their lives stolen from them that did make it to the Americas.

/thread.

The vast majority of American Indian deaths were between 1492 and 1650. As bad as the US genocide was, it was piddling compared to smallpox. There haven’t been 100 million American Indians alive between 1776 and now, let alone killed.

Remember, Jews and Asians don't fit into the woke victimology scheme because they're successful. They're all white on the inside.

Those groups aren't invested in oppression narratives, which accounts for their success and the hostility the left has for them.

Not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing, but, that those atrocities took place in what is now the US and the US was made possible due to those deaths, the time range does not remove responsibility from “the US”.

I don’t even know what you two are talking about. Atrocities are atrocities regardless of who commits them or their political leanings. I know of no one who dismisses the atrocities against any group due to the successes of those groups.

Yeah, it's just jealousy from those who are too lazy, shiftless, stupid, unmotivated... should I go on?

If you want, but I didn't say any of that.

Anyhow, how do you account for those groups' relative success? Strange that white supremacy just can't seem to keep them down. Maybe they didn't notice they were being kept down?

Yep, it's gotta be their fault. Seeing it any other way would make us white folks uncomfortable. Can/t have that can we?

Wrong thread. This one is about Whoopi’s comments and the difference between race, culture, and religion.

Whoppi Goldberg just said that the Holocaust--an atrocity driven by an unbelievably well-documented racial philosophy--was not really a race thing, but a religion thing.

Fucking absurd. Like the Nazis would've thrown open the gates of Auschwitz if the Jews converted to Christianity. "Accept Jesus or vee gas you!"

But Jews, being successful, are white by proxy. The successful can only be the perpetrators. And so they can't be the victims of actual racism. Even when they're the poster children for being exterminated on racial grounds.

Who do Asians and Jews get a pass from the supposed white supremacist system? What's your explanation?

It can't be that there's never been animus against either group; there certainly has been.

Follow the conversation, please.

If that was the "apology" it sure comes across as a bullshit apology.

The Nazis had a rather flexible view on race, when it suited them, however. They happily produced copious documents "proving" that the Japanese and Italians were really "Aryan," but still planned to wipe them all out at some point for being "racially inferior." They also considered people who converted to Judaism as being of the "Jewish race," even if they would have been considered "Aryan" had they not converted.

Of course, by having a flexible definition of race, the Nazis enabled more people to join their movement. Not only by saying that the Japanese and Italians were "Aryan," but if you didn't particularly hate Jews, and really hated the French for some reason, you could still find their movement appealing. Granted, the Nazis were primarily focused on the Jews, to the point that as the war started really going against them, they began diverting stuff from the war zones to accelerate the mass killing of Jews because they thought that if they managed to wipe out all the Jews in Europe, the Allies would surrender.

Slavery wasn't about racism. It was about economic expediency.

You must be talking about CRT, because you can't be ignorant of all the rabid antisemitism and anti-Asian hate crimes going on in the U.S. right now.

Hahaha, holy shit we literally have Paladin arguing in this thread that the system can't be racist because Jewish people do ok in the USA?

What?

Fucking what?!

Not invested in oppression narratives? Israel would like to have a word with you.

Okay I'll bite. How is the left hostile toward Jews and Asians?

Excusing racist college admissions criteria, for one.

I didn't say can't be racist. I asked what explains Jewish and Asian success in America if white supremacy is intent on keeping non-whites down.

And, no, "the system" in the U.S. isn't racist.

That's hostility on the part of the left? Why does the left not want Asian Americans to go to college?

Well something has to explain the disparity for African Americans with regards to poverty rates, wealth building, education, health, crime etc.

Because so many do well enough in high school because of the academic-centric home culture that, thanks to academic-centric admissions criteria, "too many" get into prestigious colleges. So to keep them out ("to create a more diverse student body"), some states are changing their public college admissions criteria so academics isn't so central anymore (the Ivy Leagues did this to keep out Jews too, many decades ago), or trying to reinstate affirmative action where it's been banned (California). Rather than, say, increasing student capacity so that everyone who wants to and meets some fixed bar can go to those colleges.