Whoopi Golberg apologized on Tuesday’s “The View” for her comments on yesterday’s show about the Holocaust, saying she now believes “it is indeed about race.”
“So yesterday on our show, I misspoke,” Goldberg said at the top of Tuesday’s show. “And I tweeted about it last night but I kind of what you to hear it from me directly. I said something that I feel a responsibility for not leaving unexamined, because my words upset so many people, which was never my intention. And I understand why now and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things. And while discussing how a Tennessee school board unanimously voted to remove a graphic novel about the Holocaust, I said that the Holocaust wasn’t about race and it was instead about man’s inhumanity to man. But it is indeed about race, because Hitler and the Nazis considered the Jews to be an inferior race. Now, words matter and mine are no exception. I regret my comments as I said and I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people, as they know, and as you all know because I’ve always done that.”
Goldberg introduced Jonathan Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League CEO, to the room. “The View’s”The first guest of today was invited on to “help continue this very important conversation” after speaking out against Goldberg’s comments on Twitter Monday.
“View”After facing criticism from Anti-Defamation League (the U.S.), Goldberg, her co-host, first apologized Monday evening Holocaust Museum and other Jewish organizations for her remarks on that day’s episode of “The View,”In which she said that the Holocaust was “not about race.”
“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,” Goldberg StatementAt 8:15 PM, she shared the following on her social media channels ET. “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.”
She also added: “The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused.”
Jonathan Greenblatt was the CEO of Anti-Defamation League. He responded earlier Monday. “The View”Co-hosts comment on Twitter. She calls her remarks “dangerous.” “The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systemic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race,” Greenblatt wrote. “They dehumanized them and used their racist propaganda to justify slaughtering 6 million Jews. Holocaust distortion is dangerous.”
Goldberg’s remarks about the Holocaust were said during a “View” discussion about the Tennessee school board’s ban of “Maus,” a nonfiction graphic novel about cartoonist Art Spiegelman’s father’s experience surviving the Holocaust.
“Let’s be truthful about it because [the] Holocaust isn’t about race,”Goldberg claimed that she had spoken to her “The View” co-hosts. “It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man… These are two white groups of people. The minute you turn it into race it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s [about] how people treat each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white, Jews — it’s each other.”
Criticism of Goldberg’s comments was swift, with Jewish organizations, including the U.S. Holocaust Museum and StopAntisemitism.org, quickly refuting her “not about race” claim.
“It upset a lot of people, which was never, ever, ever my intention,” Goldberg told Stephen Colbert on Monday’s “Late Show,”It was taped at approximately 6:15 PM ET. ET and aired later in evening. “I thought we were having a discussion. Because I feel being Black, when we talk about race, it’s a very different thing to me. So I said that I felt that the Holocaust wasn’t about race, and people got very, very, very angry and still are angry. I’m getting, you know, all of the mail from folks, and very real anger because people feel very differently. But I thought it was a salient discussion because, as a Black person, I think of race as being something that I can see. So I see you and I know what race you are, and the discussion was about how I felt about that. I felt that it was really more about man’s inhumanity to man and how horrible people can be to people, and we’re seeing it manifest itself these days. But people were very angry and they said, ‘No, no, we are a race.’ And I understand, I understand. I felt differently, I respect everything everyone is saying to me and I don’t want to fake apologize, you know? I’m very upset that people misunderstood what I was saying and so, because of it, they’re saying that I’m antisemitic and that I’m denying the Holocaust and all these other things which, you know, would never occur to me to do. I thought we were having a discussion about race, which everyone, I think, is having.”
She also added: “When you talk about being a racist, I was saying, you can’t call this racism, this was evil. This wasn’t based on the skin, 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. If the klan is coming down the street and I’m standing with a Jewish friend and neither one of– well, I’m going to run! But if my friend decides not to run, they’ll get passed by most times because you can’t tell who is Jewish… It’s not something that people say, ‘Oh, that person is Jewish! Or this person is Jewish!’ And so that’s what I was trying to explain,” Golberg continued. “And I understand that not everybody sees it that way and I did a lot of harm, I guess, to myself and people decided I was all these other things I’m actually not. And I’m incredibly torn up by being told these things about myself and I get it, folks are angry. I accept that and I did it to myself. This was my thought process and I will work hard not to think that way again.”
Colbert was told by Goldberg what it is “interesting”She was “the Nazis lied,”Say it “they had issues with ethnicity, not with race because most of the Nazis were white people and most of the people they were attacking were white people.”
“So to me, I’m thinking, how can you say it’s about race if you are fighting each other? So, it all really began because I said, how will we explain to children what happened in Nazi Germany?”She continued. “I said, this wasn’t racial, this was about white on white. And everybody said, no, no, no, it was racial. So once again, don’t write me anymore, I know how you feel. OK, I already know, I get it and I’m going to take your word for it and never bring it up again.”
More to come…