Whoopi Goldberg and Holocaust Denial

 

Whoopi Goldberg’s comments on the Holocaust are kind of dumb, but not scandalous. There is an old scientific classification of mankind into three or four distinct races: Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Negroid, and Australoid. If Whoopi learned this definition in some science class, it would be right for her to say that Jews were not a different race from the Aryan Germans, and so the Holocaust was not about race, but ethnicity.

It’s a little weird, because the Nazis certainly did consider Semites a separate race from Aryans, so their motivations, even if scientifically mistaken, were racist. But that argument is semantic, and it seems foolish to assume Goldberg was saying something shocking or offensive. Perhaps she intended to, but it cannot be assumed from this.