Whoopi Goldberg Said What Progressives – Including ADL – Are Thinking About Racism
When Whoopi Goldberg said the Holocaust wasn’t about race, because Nazis and Jews were both white, she voiced what has become unquestioned truth in today’s progressive circles. The ADL, an organization founded to fight Jew-hatred, is complicit.
When Whoopi Goldberg said the Holocaust wasn’t about race, because Nazis and Jews were both white, she voiced what has become unquestioned truth in today’s progressive circles. By redefining racism to exclude Jewish victims, the political left succeeded in belittling Jew-hatred into something that is not serious.
This intellectual fraud has been so successful that many non-Jews who are not anti-Semitic, and even many Jews, have come to accept its premise. Goldberg is generally considered a voice of reason on her show, and the fact that she would believe or express such views shows how pervasive this alternate reality has become. The lie has helped anti-Semitism flourish while people who should know better ignored it, or even helped it along.
Under this rationale, attacks against Jews are only taken seriously if the Jewish victims happen also to be “people of color.” Otherwise, not. After Women’s March leaders’ blatant anti-Semitism became big news, Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory made sure to get photographed marching next to Jewish Women of Color. They evidently hoped to conceal their Jew-hatred and general presumption that Jews could not be victims by this show of tolerating colored Jews among the oppressed.
When ethnic studies activist Artnelson Concordia spoke at an outreach event last fall arranged to reassure Jews worried about California’s ethnic studies requirement, Concordia conceded only that “Jews of color” could be considered marginalized populations who might qualify for inclusion in ethnic studies.
California’s first attempt to impose an ethnic studies curriculum (a variation of Critical Race Theory) was rejected after Jews and others objected to its obvious anti-Semitism. A revised bill was enacted last October. The new law tones down the original bill’s anti-Semitism, but lets California school districts use private curricula instead of the state’s.
Castro Valley school district promptly hired Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Institute (LESMCI), the people behind the failed initial bill’s anti-Semitic curriculum, to provide their version of ethnic studies. LESMCI’s curriculum features a focus on “Palestine” that paints Israel as a horrid human-rights violator abusing Palestinian Arabs out of racism.
LESMCI tries to counter charges of anti-Semitism proactively by redefining it. “Antisemitism is discrimination against, violence towards, or stereotypes of Jews for being Jewish,” LESMCI asserts. In other words, LESMCI claims, anti-Semitism is strictly a religious hatred. It has nothing to do with racism or any hatred against Jews based on race, ethnicity, or nationality.
LESMCI’s definition of anti-Semitism
That would have been news to German Jews persecuted under the racially-based Nuremberg laws, the six million Jews who died condemned as subhuman vermin, and many others who suffered because of Nazi racial theories.
As Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks explained, anti-Semitism is a mutating virus by which society projects onto Jews whatever is most hateful to it: “In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated for their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were hated for their race. Today, they are hated for their nation state.”
Race-hatred and religious hatred of Jews haven’t disappeared or become benign (read, Pittsburgh) just because other deadly mutations (particularly anti-Zionism) have appeared.
Nevertheless, in today’s progressive hierarchy of racism, only racial or ethnic discrimination counts as oppression, and only against non-whites. However fanciful the science on which any discrimination is based, racially-justified persecution of anyone whom today’s racism experts deem “white” simply doesn’t count as racism, let alone oppression. The same progressive experts claim Jews are now “white”, unless they happen to have African-American or maybe Asian or Hispanic ancestry. (But if their ancestors were kicked out of Spain in 1492, forget it, they’re non-Hispanic whites.)
Tragically, the Anti-Defamation League under Jonathan Greenblatt’s leadership has played into the effort to divorce Jews from the reality of racially-, ethnically-, and nationally-based anti-Jewish hatred, persecution, and discrimination.
In July 2020, the ADL even changed its definition of racism. ADL had long defined racism as “the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.”
ADL’s definition of racism as of mid-July 2020
The new version redefined racism as “marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.” In other words, racial superiority is only “racist” if it’s done by a white person against a “person of color.”
ADL’s definition of racism as of early August 2020
Would Nazi persecution of European Jews count as “racism” under that definition? If one defines European Jews as white, the answer is, No.
When Goldberg reached out to Greenblatt, she created a real problem for him. Jewish media had recently begun to cover the changed definition. Greenblatt was in the awkward position of “educating” Goldberg that Nazi and other anti-Semitism often takes the form of racism, while his own organization seemed to deny it. How embarrassing!
ADL has focused on white racism in other ways, too. In January 2022, it hired a prominent activist for Jews of color as its Director of Jewish Outreach and Partnerships, especially to Jews of color.
The ADL appears so enamored of left-wing political advocacy focusing on anti-“color” racism that it was ready to junk its raison d’etre, protecting Jews against bigotry. Instead, it sought to protect a small subsection of the Jewish community. By doing so, it sought to win plaudits from the political left that has basically turned its back on Jews on the false rationalization that Jews are Zionists and “therefore” racist oppressors, not victims.
After some pushback against the ADL’s new definition and the brouhaha over Goldberg’s gaffe, ADL made cosmetic changes to its redefinition. It now says: “Racism occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity.” Occurs? That’s not a definition of a concept, but of an event. What was wrong with the old definition, and why didn’t the ADL revert to it?
ADL’s current definition of racism
ADL’s racism page goes on to define “systemic racism” as a “combination of systems, institutions and factors that advantage white people and for people of color, cause widespread harm and disadvantages in access and opportunity.” The latest changes seem to be window dressing for ADL’s continuing effort to embed racial classifications into its racism definition.
ADL’s current definition of “systemic racism”
What’s next? Will ADL define how much “white” or “colored” ancestry is required to classify victims and perpetrators correctly?
This racialization of racism belittles the harm caused by anti-Semitism, whether expressed as racist, religious, nationalist, or some other hatred. It’s bad enough when non-Jews dismiss Jew-hatred. Why an organization founded to fight Jew-hatred is privileging other hatreds over anti-Semitism and obsessing about racial classification is inexplicable.
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White people … people of colour. Um White is a colour. Specifically it is the unity of the light spectrum, or the balanced output of RGB LEDs, Black however is the absence of anything.
The Left needs to find a term other than PoC.
Yes, black is the absence of color. And the Rainbow is its division, affirmative violence to persons of people a la planned parent/hood… planned peoplehood at the Choice of Nazi, Mao, Stalin, and less visible handmade tailors from days past, present, and progressive.
Let’s all remember whoopi made her name first when her “act” was based on her “imitation of a white, ‘valley girl'”. Later she became the embodiment of Patrick Swayze as a spiritually trans, “black” medium making love to “white” demi moore. In the “sister act” series she mocked “white” nuns, and roman catholicism. In general she has done well mocking, stereotyping various groups (of what are now without distinction known as) “whites”; while neither student nor fan of her “body of work”, I am unaware of any time when she mocked / made fun of those identifying as “black” (that is by itself racist).
It is time to call this (b)igger, “hypocrite” than most out for the racist she is; not to mention prostitute who will say anything for $$$,$$$. … Like so may others (regardless of skin tone) I expect her “stupidity” will ensure her fame will diminish and eventually obviate her too long “15 minutes” – “Ashes to Ashes, “coal” Dust to “coal Dust”. Burn in H3ll. Whoopie.
In the section of her 1040 where it asks “Occupation,” she states, “Being ugly both inside & outside.”
She was jealous of some “Bouncing, Behaving” hair
(b)igger.
I’m stealin’ that!
I will enjoy much schadenfreude when she Uris reduced to doing ads for time shares, nutritional supplements, and products for the elderly.
“Why an organization founded to fight Jew-hatred is privileging other hatreds over anti-Semitism and obsessing about racial classification is inexplicable.”
It is easily explained. Pay attention: To the left, everything must serve the cause. EVERYTHING. And the cause is not protecting Jews. (or anyone else)
She is an unbelievable ignoramus poser. She knows nothing, except Hollywood bullsh-t and what she reads in her morning MSNBC emails.
As for ADL, it’s simply a malignant leftist organization posing as the “ADL”. Kind of like Jews for Jesus.
Slandering Jews for Jesus.
Whoopi’s head is as fat as her “fundament”.
And she’s lecturing us about health issues.
Marxist sociology and political science professors created a new definition of racism in the last two or three decades.
And, being Marxists and doing what Marxists do, they assert it is the one and only TRVE and valid definition of racism, And they demand that everyone agree, comply, and behave accordingly. Or else…cancellation for you. By the credentialed morons they’ve indoctrinated and brain-washed in public K-12 schools and the universities.
By their definition — which is pure Marxist BS and propaganda — Whoopi was correct. Which is why she is unapologetic and angry. She has tens of thousands of Marxist sociology and political science professors on her side.
They just make it up as they go. Sadly, lazy and narcissistic young people in school buy into it.
Dissenting opinion
Well, I’m sorry, but technically, I’m with Whoopi on this one (hold my barf bag).
Why do Jews think they are a “race?” Is it because Nazi “rAcIaL sciEnCe” told them they were one? The same “racial science” that blathered on about an “Aryan race,” which also does not exist?
Follow the actual science. There are three races in humanity: mongoloid, caucasoid, negroid. Period. This is taxonomic science. Everything else is “social science,” and as we have observed repeatedly on this very forum, every time somebody puts “social” before X (e.g., “social justice”), it means they want to negate X while co-opting its semantic authority.
(Some claim that the Australian aborigine is a distinct race. I haven’t investigated that possibility, since racial taxonomy isn’t one of my fetishes, but am willing to be persuaded; the same way I was persuaded relatively recently that the Japanese had made an extremely good case for establishing a “fifth taste” (umami) despite years of contrary science… especially since they actually found the physical receptors for it (that’s real science). Similarly, hominid precursors to homo sapiens are additional distinct races, but — like Dick Nixon — we don’t have them to kick around anymore.)
Aryan, Jewish, and Gypsy/Romany are not races. Hispanic and Chinese and Amerind are not races. Arab and Islamic and Catholic are not races. They can be nationalities, ethnicities, communities, religions, or several other collective nouns, but not races. Even the US Census form begrudgingly but officially makes this distinction.
Ethnic Jews, in fact, span at least two races: caucasoid and (to a much lesser extent) negroid (e.g., Ethiopian Jews).
But what is the big deal? Does anybody really believe that bigoted animosity between race and race is anathema, while bigoted animosity between ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and communities is way more acceptable? Well, yes — progressive assholes. And we are not progressive assholes.
The bigoted animosity between “Aryans” and Jews is equally offensive to me when viewed as occurring between communities, ethnicities, or religions as it would be if it had been about “race.” Unlike progressives, I don’t consider “race” to be a trump card in every argument. Everything issue not be about “race” to be important or objectionable.
In my perception, this is the obvious, objective truth that Whoopi was expressing, totally oblivious to the fact that there was a crucial progressive orthodoxy she was abandoning by doing it, and was now open to getting slammed hard for it. Which she was, immediately, by her co-host, a devout progressive to whom everything has to be about “race.” And the pattern completed itself predictably.
What I don’t understand is all the conservatives piling on Whoopi for what she said. Sure, she’s a toothsome target of opportunity for conservatives, and her blood is now in the water… but this is one of the few times she’s actually been right outside of Ten Forward. Why is it not tickling our oh-oh detectors that conservatives and progressives are beating her up over the same argument? We are the group who is supposed to value “how to think” over “what to think.”
And as for Jews, such as the author, who argue oppositely, I honestly can’t understand their position. As far as I’m concerned, they’re arguing against their own best interests. Although, as a Second Amendment advocate, and a life member of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, I wish I could say it’s the first time I’ve encountered that.
“technically” they’re not. Who cares?
The point here is that the Nazis most certainly viewed the Jews as a race. Interestingly, the Nazis were not concerned about “technically.” And no one else cares either.
Whoopi also said the Nazi Holocaust was about man’s inhumanity to man. Wouldn’t it have been better if the subsequent discussion had been: ok, then, isn’t black on black violence man’s inhumanity to man, isn’t police on black violence about man’s inhumanity to man, isn’t white on black violence man’s inhumanity to man, isn’t black on Jewish violence man’s inhumanity to man, isn’t Muslim on Christian violence man’s inhumanity to man, isn’t black on white violence man’s inhumanity to man? Etc, etc.
I don’t have a problem with any of that. Seriously. Of course, I wasn’t in charge of the subsequent discussion. The chattering classes were.
I’ve always been of the opinion that only collectivists like or hate other people depending on which square in the intersectionality grid they fall into. Normal people like or hate other people as individuals, depending on the content of their character or the history of their actions.
Good point. In my own way, I was agreeing with your first post in my reply.
Henry, you have laid out the case most elegantly. For the life of me, I don’t know what the fuss is about. The Nazis hated the Jews, I think quite irrationally, became they could have used them in their war efforts. The fact that the Nazis were irrational (or plainly nuts) is all that is necessary to know.
Technically there is no acceptable definition of “race”; it has always been fluid, because there is no precise scientific explanation or means of identification.
Thus “racial profiles” have always relied on physical characteristics; and even when genetics are attempted as identifiers there are no comparative standards, e.g., fauxcahontas is 1/1024 “native american” (not a race; a categorization; and Cherokee was a tribe – so it’s up to the Cherokee Nation to welcome her, not for her to self identify); silly, but what if she were 1/100th ?
If these United States wanted equality, government would drop all “preferences”. But, that would take away a significant tactic in attracting votes among the uninformed voters to highly unqualified candidates who only offer their appearance as evidence of their desire to represent similarly looking constituents.
Further, example of the absurdity of it all –
https://colorofwhiteness.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States#Finnish_Americans
Jew and Black are equally scientifically valid races.
Homo Sapiens is the only valid human race that hasn’t been extinct for tens of thousands of years.
Just follow the money. They say whatever the biggest payer wants them to say – Period.
I don’t see any logic in any of this.
If they are haters they should be rejected, period.
Give all a chance for open honest statements but do not sign-on to any of this deceitful or dishonest attacks against anyone based on their race or religion.
This. As I argue above, there is nothing about “race hate” that always trumps “non-race hate.” Claiming otherwise plays into our opponent’s control of the terms of debate.
I don’t know … the point is not whether Nazi Jew-hate is “racism” or not. The Nazis certainly thought it was, but who cares what their thoughts were. The fact is that the Nazis targeted the Jews – Jews by birth, as Nazis didn’t care if one was practicing or not, having been born a Jew by the Nazi measure was enough and there was no arguing oneself out of it – and they targeted the Jews for something that blacks have never had to deal with in America – extermination. Total, complete extermination. It does not matter one whit if you want to technically define the Nazi attitude as “racism” or not. I don’t care. It matters NONE. What matters is that people were targeted – according to birth and lineage – for complete extermination. Not to be enslaved, but to be killed and rendered extinct. Whoopi might recall that the lucky Jews in WWII under the Germans were the ones who were made slaves. The lucky ones. Blacks in America never had to deal with the concept of extermination that the Nazis were pursuing for the Jews. The label one puts on it is immaterial. What the Jews suffered was far, far worse than any “racism”.
“For we have been sold, I and my people, to be exterminated, killed, and destroyed. Had we been sold as slaves I would have kept quiet, for the enemy does not put any value on the damage to the king.” (Esther 7:4)
Nice pull. I think I have to reread the Book of Esther.
The entire Old Testament. Sorry Milhouse.
The Tanakh.
Well, the Nazis absolutely were racist towards people with Jewish ancestry, precisely because that ancestry was the determining factor.
Israel is not racist towards the Palestinians, because they commit human rights abuses against them irrespective of their ancestry, skin colour or nationality.
Many followers of the Jewish religion are racist towards people that aren’t of Jewish ancestry because they don’t consider them ‘true’ Jews, even if they convert to follow the Jewish faith. That doesn’t mean that people with Jewish ancestry are racist.
White is not a race. Black is not a race. The ADL is racist. Whoopi Goldberg is ignorant.
No, they don’t. (As a quasi-socialist state Israel has committed what I would call human rights abuses against all its citizens, most of whom are Jews; but no worse than most other so-called “free” countries, and it doesn’t commit any in particular against the so-called “Palestinians”. )
The worst Israeli human rights abuse I can think of is the forcible expulsion of thousands of Jewish residents from villages that the government decided to give away, first to Egypt and then to the PA. If any other country had done that the world would be up in arms. That was done to Jews because they were Jews, not to “Palestinians”.
That is not true. If someone has a valid conversion they are a Jew like any other; of course a fake conversion does nothing, just as a fake naturalization doesn’t make someone a US citizen.
Exactly right, Milhouse.
I think the worst abuse the Israeli government has committed is forcing its entire citizenry to received multiple injections of mRNA. Truly an act of “self-hatred” and “genocide”. There is tremendous censoring of the death and permanent injury in the form of chronic, debilitating health issues they condemned the Israeli people to suffer. … But, that is “socialism”.
They haven’t actually forced anyone to be vaccinated. They’ve just strongly encouraged it, and made it difficult to choose not to.
Millhouse wrote: “They [Government of Israel] haven’t actually forced anyone to be vaccinated. They’ve just strongly encouraged it, and made it difficult to choose not to.”
I reply with the questions: “What are the words which describe a government’s insistence, in the extreme which in action among individuals would qualify as uninformed consent, coercion, psychological or extreme pressure, unlawful pressure, forcible restraint and / or extreme duress, versus voluntary consent ?”
Then please answer: “What the government of Israel did to ensure its ‘subjects’ / ‘comrades’ chose to receive mRNA injections ‘without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and [to ensure the mRNA recipient] should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved, as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.'” … ?
Sisu, nothing they’ve done amounts to actual force. Someone sufficiently convinced that they shouldn’t get vaccinated is still able to refuse. They might have to give up many things that make their life more enjoyable, but they get to preserve their life, and their liberty. Compare that to Austria, where they’re talking about holding people down and jabbing the needle into them.
I have a friend who can’t even tell his parents that he has a girlfriend, as their community will reject them due to his girlfriend not having Jewish ancestry.
Don’t tell me that’s got anything to do with a “valid conversion” or otherwise. That’s racists in the community.
His sister married someone so orthodox he won’t eat food off a non-kosher plate. They’re lovely people, I enjoy their company and I’ve danced with all four of them but don’t tell me I’m lying when I accurately describe the behaviour of some members of their community.
Unless your friend’s family is Syrian, I don’t believe the issue is ancestry at all. The validity of the conversion is far more likely to be the issue. (Or he’s a Cohen, in which case he can’t marry a convert.)
Not eating food off a non-kosher plate is not “so orthodox”; it’s normal observance of kashrut. (Yes, technically if the food is cold and the plate is clean it’s OK, but it’s not something anyone who keeps kosher would do if there was any choice.)
PS: By “Syrian” I mean Aleppan. Aleppans do have a problem with converts, but they’re such snobs they have a problem with anyone whose great-grandparents weren’t all born in Aleppo. Even Damascenes aren’t good enough for them.
They’re not Syrian or Aleppan or whatever.
They’re from Manchester.
I agree. Turks and Armenians have been doing this amongst themselves forever. Strip two of them and you will be hard-pressed to distinguish one from the other.
The Turks didn’t slaughter the Armenians because they were allegedly of a different race. They were slaughtered because they weren’t Muslim, as Muslims have done since Muhammad’s ascension to warlord. Muhammad ordered the extermination of all non-Muslims in Arabia, for example. Why shouldn’t Turkey be as pure as Arabia, and take all the land and wealth of the impure, which they have no right to possess?
That just isn’t true they were killed because they weren’t Turks. The Young Turks were an anti-Islam Party that was trying to establish an ethnic state to replace the Ottoman Empire which was a multi-racial empire tied together by loyalty to the emperor (in other words what you would call a third world equivalent of the Hapsburgs).
The Young Turks would go on to outright overthrow the Ottoman Empire and among other things ban Islamic symbols like the Hijab and the Burqa in public places, and would try to create a secularized society.
With any luck I’ll get my Scout back by Thursday.
https://scoutparts.com/
The ADL in order to tow the woke line now views anti Semitism via intersectional theory It is as helpful in fighting anti Semitism as the SPLC and Morris Dees -a total fraud
I think boiled down, Whoopies view of the world is that there are evil and oppressive white (includes Jews) and white adjacent (includes Asians) people, and there are good but oppressed black people.
Take that philosophy, but it to work in a little pea brain, and stuff that pea brain into a super arrogant, full-of-herself-but-stupid, gigantically fat body and you’ve got the Whoopster.
She didn’t come up with this on her own. Nor did anyone; this worldview was originally designed by the USSR and injected into US thought by its agents, for the purpose of weakening US society and softening us up for eventual conquest. The object wasn’t to make white people out to be bad, but to make the USA out to be bad, and therefore not worth defending. Since at the time white-on-black racism prevailed here, that was singled out as the sin to be condemned. Had it not been, they’d have picked something else.
The current leftist orthodoxy of CRT/equity holds that there are two broad categories: Oppressors and the Oppressed. Membership is determined along racial lines. Examination of individual people and their own personal experience, struggle or achievements or lack thereof is not allowed or at best is merely supplemental to ones individual placement in the diversity olympics.
The HS dropout born to a coal mining family in Appalachia is placed onto the board as possessing privilege and thus an oppressor; solely due to skin color. Equally the PhD holding great grand children of the ‘talented tenth’ who are the offspring of multiple generations of University graduates are placed onto board as oppressed and lacking privilege; solely due to skin color.
No other considerations override the initial placement based on an immutable characteristic. Not social status, economic status, associations, disability, education level, achievements, criminal record, success or failure. Those may serve to one up or down within the initial placement category but never to move one out of their status as oppressed or oppressor.
Whoopi Goldberg is the voice of reason?? Bwahaha!
Whoopi was correct. Her antagonists seem to eager to let Hitler define race.
From a scientific perspective, “race” is just one of several terms (like variety, subspecies, ecotype, form, etc.) long used to describe genetically differentiated populations of greater or lesser distinctness within a single species. The most logical taxonomic categorization of the spectrum of genotypes is a matter for physical anthropologists and population geneticists to opine on. No such system will honestly claim the groups characterized have sharp boundaries between them.
And of course it is a completely different matter as to whether governments should use ANY sort of classification scheme for its social engineering purposes. A large percentage of the U.S. population would like to forbid government from demanding individuals categorize themselves racially, as we proved with the Racial Privacy Initiative in California in 2002. It got 37% of the vote.
Jews are, by any scientific definition, a multiracial group, as are Christians and Muslims. No one should give a damn if Hitler referred to them or thought of them as a monoracial group, or if Jews think it is useful to do so to encourage ethnic or religious solidarity.
Since the Holocaust was Hitler’s crime, when characterizing it his perspective on it is kind of important, wouldn’t you say. The Holocaust was absolutely about race and nothing else, because that’s how he saw it.
Absolutely
And yet I would be as loath to stipulate to the validity of Hitler’s misuse of the word race as I would be to stipulate to the validity of Brandon’s misuse of the word successful.
Curiously, just today, I came across a quote from some antebellum panjandrum inveighing against every word and deed attributed to “the Yankee race.” I mean, come on. There’s no way anyone should interpret this level of lexical abuse as anything more significant than a poetic trope.
We are talking about the historical record and how things actually came to be. That’s especially in light of race being a social construct. The Nazis invented a social construct called Aryanism and one related to Jews filled with tropes and used that as a justification for their actions. That’s foundational to what racism actually is ie creating a negative picture of something in order to justify horrible things.
A bloviated pig, blabbing about a DEAD HOWG? This huge BUFFOON hog keeps beating. WUT A POS this bloviated BUFFFOON (w)IGGER THIS is.
Whoopi was wrong not because Jews are a distinct race. Anyone can be a Jew. Whoopi was wrong because clearly it was about race for the Hitler and the Nazis.
If the question depends on who you choose as the arbiter of terms, it’s often best to choose the one who is least mentally deranged.