Whoopi’s Holocaust Comment Wasn’t Far Off The Mark

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1943

Abstract

s bedroom window and looked around London, where innocent people were also killed, maimed, and rendered homeless by Nazis for the sin of being British.Better still, a grown-up takes him aside, whispers: Your kit is bollocks, highness.Harry apologizes. Goes back upstairs to change. End of story.Whoopi’s comment is far less off-target of what is appropriate than Harry’s. The Nazis certainly thought of Jews—and Romani, Slavs, Arabs, to name a few—as racially distinct. They drew on the racial antisemitism that spread through Europe in the late 19th century, prompted in part by the belief that Darwinian “survival of the fittest” applied to human society. The Nuremberg Laws were crafted to preserve Ayran bloodlines from “contamination” by those regarded as inferior.But, so what? Americans, by and large, don’t and haven’t regarded Jews as racially distinct. While Social Darwinism and racial eugenics had their day here, they were far less influential than they had been in the old country.The one official anti-Jewish regulation in US history was issued by U.S Grant in 1862, expelling all Jews from the Department of the Tennessee. Grant, motivated by alleged sharp trading on the part of some Jewish merchants, would spend much of his presidency making up for that moment of idiocy. Nevertheless, General Order #11 refers to Jews as a “class”. There is no reference to or suggestion of race.<figure id="c271"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*QJqW9gw8PaeMfk69MYCPLA.jpeg"><figcaption>©the author</figcaption></figure>We American Jews have long grappled with an identity that’s more than a religion but less than a race. Maybe Liel Liebovitz said it best in a NY Times op/ed: “<a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/liel-leibovitz/jews-are-not-white/">We’re our own thing</a>”.<p id="b9

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30">Along with Irish, Italians, Poles, Slavs, Greeks, etc., the more Jews centered themselves into mainstream American economic and political life the less likely we were to have a box to check other than white. Of course that still leaves people like Walter Moseley, creator of Easy Rawlins and a fellow just as Jewish as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, outside of American Jewish whiteness. Or, how about a family that escapes Germany to say, Argentina. Their children grow up speaking Spanish, marry the children of other Jewish immigrant families. Are they Latino? Did a change of location and language transform their ethnicity? If so, that’s a pretty cool trick.It’s also another discussion for another day.Here and in Europe the view of Jews as racially distinct coincides with anti-Jewish sentiment. Ask some of the gang at stormfront.org if Jews are white. They’ll be more than happy to clarify. Nor is this anything new. After forced conversions spread through Christian Spain in the 14th and 15th centuries, conversos—ethnic Jews who had converted to Christianity—were still regarded as outsiders, not fit to marry or maintain social contact with those of pura sangre, or pure Spanish blood, untainted by Moors or the Children of Abraham.What is most important here is that religious fanatics and fascist white supremacists don’t get the last word. When she claimed race wasn’t a factor in the Holocaust Whoopi was simply applying an American definition of race to Jews. She declined to leave that definition to the Nazis. A position for which we should applaud her.Bottom line … Whoopi’s assertion begs a clarification and point of historical context. Not an apology. And certainly not suspension.*Guys, don’t get mad. It’s a good thing. Recall why Whoopi took the name “Goldberg” in the first place.</article></body>

Yes, the Nazis made it about race, but must we?

Whoopi Goldberg apologized for insisting that the Holocaust had nothing to do with race. For her trouble she was granted a two-week suspension from her talk show, The View.

For what purpose?

Is it intended she take this time to read, or reread, Maus (if so, I know where she can find copies cheap … lightly used), or the Diary of a Young Girl, or Night or anything by Yehuda Bauer? Perhaps a trip to Poland to visit Auschwitz, or Jerusalem to visit Yad Vashem? Maybe she’ll just ponder the power American Jews wield over popular media*.

Recall the tsuris when Prince Harry attended a costume party dressed in a … costume? His choice of a Nazi brownshirt was in poor taste. ADL and allied spokespersons suggested a trip to Auschwitz to educate the artless royal.

Yeah. Harry could have done that. He could have traveled to Poland. Or he could have opened his bedroom window and looked around London, where innocent people were also killed, maimed, and rendered homeless by Nazis for the sin of being British.

Better still, a grown-up takes him aside, whispers: Your kit is bollocks, highness.

Harry apologizes. Goes back upstairs to change. End of story.

Whoopi’s comment is far less off-target of what is appropriate than Harry’s. The Nazis certainly thought of Jews—and Romani, Slavs, Arabs, to name a few—as racially distinct. They drew on the racial antisemitism that spread through Europe in the late 19th century, prompted in part by the belief that Darwinian “survival of the fittest” applied to human society. The Nuremberg Laws were crafted to preserve Ayran bloodlines from “contamination” by those regarded as inferior.

But, so what? Americans, by and large, don’t and haven’t regarded Jews as racially distinct. While Social Darwinism and racial eugenics had their day here, they were far less influential than they had been in the old country.

The one official anti-Jewish regulation in US history was issued by U.S Grant in 1862, expelling all Jews from the Department of the Tennessee. Grant, motivated by alleged sharp trading on the part of some Jewish merchants, would spend much of his presidency making up for that moment of idiocy. Nevertheless, General Order #11 refers to Jews as a “class”. There is no reference to or suggestion of race.

©the author

We American Jews have long grappled with an identity that’s more than a religion but less than a race. Maybe Liel Liebovitz said it best in a NY Times op/ed: “We’re our own thing”.

Along with Irish, Italians, Poles, Slavs, Greeks, etc., the more Jews centered themselves into mainstream American economic and political life the less likely we were to have a box to check other than white. Of course that still leaves people like Walter Moseley, creator of Easy Rawlins and a fellow just as Jewish as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, outside of American Jewish whiteness. Or, how about a family that escapes Germany to say, Argentina. Their children grow up speaking Spanish, marry the children of other Jewish immigrant families. Are they Latino? Did a change of location and language transform their ethnicity? If so, that’s a pretty cool trick.

It’s also another discussion for another day.

Here and in Europe the view of Jews as racially distinct coincides with anti-Jewish sentiment. Ask some of the gang at stormfront.org if Jews are white. They’ll be more than happy to clarify. Nor is this anything new. After forced conversions spread through Christian Spain in the 14th and 15th centuries, conversos—ethnic Jews who had converted to Christianity—were still regarded as outsiders, not fit to marry or maintain social contact with those of pura sangre, or pure Spanish blood, untainted by Moors or the Children of Abraham.

What is most important here is that religious fanatics and fascist white supremacists don’t get the last word. When she claimed race wasn’t a factor in the Holocaust Whoopi was simply applying an American definition of race to Jews. She declined to leave that definition to the Nazis. A position for which we should applaud her.

Bottom line … Whoopi’s assertion begs a clarification and point of historical context. Not an apology. And certainly not suspension.

*Guys, don’t get mad. It’s a good thing. Recall why Whoopi took the name “Goldberg” in the first place.