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Whoopi Goldberg Isn't the Only One Who Doesn't Understand Anti-Semitism

(Washington Post) Daniella Greenbaum - On Monday Whoopi Goldberg declared that "the Holocaust wasn't about race," because it was "two groups of White people." Her co-hosts pushed back: Joy Behar noted that the Nazis were obsessed with race, and Sara Haines reminded Goldberg that Jews were not considered White in Nazi Germany. Within eight hours, Goldberg had apologized, saying, "I'm sorry for the hurt I have caused." But her comments reflect a disturbing ideology that is growing increasingly rampant: a concerted effort to rewrite the history of the Jewish people and render the nature of anti-Semitism as nebulous and as nonspecific to Jews as possible. It's an ideology that tries to turn Jews into White people, that tries to erase Jewish vulnerability and oppression, and which myopically categorizes the hatred against them into American considerations of what racism looks like. But Jews predate these categories (and America, as a nation) by thousands of years. As I watched Goldberg, I found myself thinking of my Berlin-born grandmother. She remembers that she wasn't allowed to go to the park, the pool or have a bicycle. She wasn't allowed into restaurants. She couldn't go to the theater, the movies, museum exhibits or the beach. These racial discriminations were state-sponsored. She carries the trauma of that exclusion with her to this day. The Nazi Nuremberg laws were highly specific, based on calculating the amount of Jewish blood in a person's veins. To describe the Holocaust as "not about race" betrays a profound ignorance of what the Holocaust entailed. The failing here is that Goldberg's misunderstanding is all too common.
2022-02-03 00:00:00
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