Widespread Outrage At Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust Remarks

Widespread Outrage At Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust Remarks

Izabella McKenna, Multimedia Manager

Whoopi Goldberg was suspended earlier this week for her comment about the Holocaust. Goldberg said “it’s not about race; it’s about man’s inhumanity to man,” which started a lot of controversy with her guest co-host, coworkers, and followers. 

Ana Navarro is an American political strategist and commentator. She is a guest co-host on ABC news. In a response to Goldberg’s remarks, Navarro said, “But it’s about a White supremacist going after Jews and Gypsies.”

Whoopi Goldberg said to her colleagues, “But these are two White groups of people, you’re missing the point. 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’s a problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white, cause Black, white, Jews … everybody eats each other.”

The late-night show host Stephen Colbert had Whoopi Goldberg on to talk to her about her remarks about the Holocaust and Goldberg told Stephen Colbert, “It upset a lot of people which was never, ever, ever, ever my intention… I thought we were having a discussion, I think of race as being something that I can see…  You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. They had to delve deeply to figure it out… My point is, they had to do the work, I don’t want to fake apologize…I’m very upset that people misunderstood what I was saying.”

On Tuesday, ABC News president Kim Godwin said in a statement, “Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments. While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments.” 

Whoopi Goldberg wrote in a statement, “On today’s show, I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man.’ I should have said it is about both. As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people – who they deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand corrected.”

While all of this was happening former “View” co-host Meghan McCain took issue with Goldberg’s comments in a column for the Daily Mail. McCain wrote, “I hope this can be used as a teachable moment to explain to millions of Americans why conflating the Holocaust as something that is specific and limited to ‘white people’ is insane, ahistorical and anti-Semitic, For as much as the left is fond of using Nazi comparisons and imagery, the truth of the Holocaust, who is targeted and why deserves to be known and understood by all.”