Whoopi was suspended from The View after this exchange reported by NBC News, “‘It’s about the Holocaust, the killing of six million people, but that didn’t bother you?” she said. “If you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it. Because the Holocaust isn’t about race. No, it’s not about race.’ Another host, Joy Behar, responded that the Nazis described Jews as a different race. ‘But it’s not about race,’ Goldberg said. ‘It’s not. It’s about man’s inhumanity to other man.’” Her suspension is ridiculously stupid and wrong.
My initial reaction was Whoopi is not completely wrong, and I still have a hard time accepting her (and my) error. The fault arises from applying today’s conception of race versus the Nazi’s characterization of it, which was decidedly wrong. If their definition of race by today’s interpretation — including their understanding of Arayn — was wrong and misused then how can one be incorrect for saying the Holocaust was not about race? I cannot fault her. Whoopi was right to say it is about man’s inhumanity to another man, with the “other” pulling double duty, although probably not intended in that way by her. It is safe to say the Holocaust was about white (Aryan) supremacy versus everyone else who was simply in the bucket of the “other,” which included socio-economic, disabled, political, religious, sexual orientation, and more distinctions. People died in concentration and death camps (and by other means) for reasons beyond race. I’m quite sure if anyone approached a white person of Jewish faith today and asked them what’s their race then they would most definitely say they’re white, not Jewish. In that regard, of course, being Jewish would not be a consideration for race. So, now we need to ask what is race, exactly?
First, we go to Merriam-Webster. 1a: any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry; 1b dated: a group of people sharing a common cultural, geographical, linguistic, or religious origin or background; 1c archaic: the descendants of a common ancestor: a group sharing a common lineage. Next, we turn to the U.S. Census Bureau, which typifies our daily experience and understanding of race. Their categories include “White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.” Notice that Jewish nor Hispanic, for that matter, are listed. The government states, “The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically [emphasis added].” The key part here is “social definition.” In fact, race is a social construct, meaning that society defines it, and clearly the definitions can vary over time and among different societies. Recall the last time you filled out a form that asked for your race. Was Jewish an option?
Not only were Nazis wrong in their classification of Jews but they were also wrong about their own race — Arayn. I was taught there is no such thing as an Aryan race. According to one scholarly work from 1944, “The Aryan myth is now completely discredited among scholars. Ethnologists (outside of Germany) do not speak of an Aryan race any more than they speak of a Jewish race. The German warmongers, in the latter part of the [19th] century, avidly adopted the myth as dressing for the doctrine sometimes called ‘Pan-Germanism’: the doctrine of a race of supermen, destined to dominate the world with the ruthlessness of ancient savagery. … The myth is a modern invention. … The myth was the creation of German linguists and philologist, who confused language relationships with racial stock relationships.” So, it seems Nazis were really good at manipulating fictional races for their own ends. One superman race and one subhuman race. Invented races to create a convenient narrative of “us versus them.”
So, where did Whoopi (and me) go wrong? Well, for Whoopi I can easily imagine her experiences with race necessarily reflects an understanding of it being something primarily defined by skin color. Indeed, we all primarily — nah, singularly — define race by this immutable attribute. To be sure, in Nazi Germany there were blond-haired, blue-eyed citizens who were Jews, right alongside their Protestant and Catholic counterparts. One classification went to the gas chambers and the others did not. Thus, when Whoopi said white Nazis were killing other white people and it wasn’t about race, then she was not entirely wrong by the standard qualifications of race defined by our society today, which is an easy error to make. In short, Whoopi misapplied her lived experience of race to an event in history where race was defined differently given the social mores of the time in Nazi Germany. It was a definition completely incongruous with most people’s definition of race today. It is all too easy to look back in history and declare — rightly — that Araynism and Jews as an inferior race was all nonsense. (Well, most of believe that anyways.) But in the context of the time, we must use the correct definitions, and for Nazis, Jews were a race. We must not forget, lest in so doing we have failed the lessons of history.