OPINION:
ABC News just suspended Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks from “The View” because she mistakenly, incorrectly and egregiously falsely stated that the Holocaust wasn’t “about race” but rather about man’s inhumanity to man.
This is a missed teaching moment.
Goldberg, after all, is entitled to her view — wrong as it is — and free speech, after all, is there to protect offensive speech. The inoffensive doesn’t need protection.
This is what Goldberg said, in context of discussing with her fellow co-hosts a Tennessee school board’s banning of a graphic novel about the Nazi death camps: “[The book “Maus” is] about the Holocaust, the killing of six million people, but that didn’t bother you? 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.”
Joy Behar corrected Goldberg by saying to the Nazis, the Jewish people were an entirely different race — an inferior race that ought to be eradicated, in fact.
And Goldberg responded: “But it’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to other man.”
Co-host Ana Navarro then weighed in and pointed to white supremacy as the cause of the Holocaust and Goldberg said, “[those are] white groups of people” and that “the minute you turn [the Holocaust] 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.”
Goldberg, chastised by the Anti-Defamation League and others, apologized a few hours later.
“I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man,” she said, in her mea culpa. “I should have said it is about both.”
She also tried to clarify to Stephen Colbert on night TV and said, “I think of race as being something that I can see.” For instance, she added, “You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. They had to delve deeply to figure it out.”
ABC’s president, Kim Godwin, suspended Goldberg just the same.
“While Whoopi has apologized,” Godwin said, “I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments.”
Yes. Reflection is good.
But Goldberg didn’t really commit a suspension-worthy crime. And pretending as if she said something that others haven’t actually thought themselves, and pretending as if her expression of that thought is somehow tantamount to persecuting Jews, is a bit of a stretch.
Goldberg’s right that Jews cannot be identified by skin color.
Goldberg’s also right that many others in America and around the world are confused by the idea that Jewish people represent both a race and a religion.
So why not have such discussions openly, honestly and factually, bringing in historians, if necessary, and representatives of Jewish groups, if necessary, and scholars, if necessary, who can all make the case that the Nazis, indeed, considered Jews a separate race, an inferior race, a “parasitic vermin” race, needful of eradication?
Why inflict punishment on a person for failing to understand a truth?
“The Nazis defined Jews as a ‘race,’” The Holocaust Encyclopedia, a project of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote. “Regarding the Jewish religion as irrelevant, the Nazis attributed a wide variety of negative stereotypes about Jews and ‘Jewish’ behavior to an unchanging biologically determined heritage that drove the ‘Jewish race,’ like other races, to struggle to survive by expansion at the expense of other races.”
Goldberg didn’t get that.
A lot of people don’t get that.
But in America, where freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution, it’s artful persuasion and fact-based discussion that ought to change minds — not stifling of speech, punishment for speech, utter shut-down of all questions that come to the contrary.
Just as statues of America’s historical figures ought not be torn down — just as flags of the Confederacy ought not be outlawed — just as memorials of Founding Fathers ought not be debased — just as conservatives ought not be booted from social media — neither should those who speak offensively, ignorantly, foolishly or naively about historical truths.
Let’s have the discussions.
This is, after all, America.
And like Goldberg or not, she has the right to express her views as she sees fit.
Banishing her does nothing for the cause of freedom or truth.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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