Whoopi Goldberg suspended from “The View”…

[Thermal]

Going to be hard to say without watching the comment in context, which would mean intentionally watching "The View". That strikes me as an unreasonable request.

Tru dat. In context, she was saying it was not "just" racism, but about the broader inhumanity of man. It was not that the Nazis were the racist uncle at Thanksgiving, but that they had crossed the line to no longer being human.

Which...well ok, I get her point. But that doesn't make her minimizing the racist angle any less callous.

 

[TragicMonkey]

That's where it gets interesting. Forgetting the details of definitions and meanings.... unless she has holes in her brain, she must know that you can't be seen to approach particular opinions on particular topics even if you are technically right about everything you say. Having the correct skin colour and politics gives you plot armour to get through it, but you are still tap dancing through a minefield. She was either doing it for attention, or she is retarded.

She's an old celebrity who gets paid (well, I presume) to just chat and air her opinions on whatever topic. I think it's pretty safe to say that having lived that sort of life for decades she and her colleagues have lost a lot of the sense of discretion that the rest of society has to maintain. Didn't she bring Ted Danson in blackface to an awards show, years ago?

Fortunately for everybody, being a celebrity means someone is famous, not that they are important. Ultimately, who gives the smallest dropping from the smallest mammal what Whoopi Goldberg thinks about the Holocaust? Now if she starts explaining those crazy hats she had on Star Trek I'll be ready to listen to her. Because what was up with those hats? Were they her idea, or was she just too polite to argue with the costume people?

 

[ponderingturtle]

A social construct would be a culture.

That is entirely missing the point of what I said. It is that culture defines what race is. I remember an article in scientific american pointing out how one person could be viewed as black in the US, white in brazil and colored a grouping distinct from black and white in south africa. So what is the real race of the person?

There simply is no biological basis for how people are sorted by race, it is all cultural.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Since when have those swarthy germans been considered white!

I go with a more traditional definition of white espoused by Ben Franklin

"That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. " Ben Franklin

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/02/swarthy-germans/48324/

 

[Venom]

Since when have those swarthy germans been considered white!

I go with a more traditional definition of white espoused by Ben Franklin

"That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. " Ben Franklin

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/02/swarthy-germans/48324/

 

[Lplus]

That is entirely missing the point of what I said. It is that culture defines what race is. I remember an article in scientific american pointing out how one person could be viewed as black in the US, white in brazil and colored a grouping distinct from black and white in south africa. So what is the real race of the person?

Whatever their genetic make up shows them to be

There simply is no biological basis for how people are sorted by race, it is all cultural.

That's just trying to hand wave obvious physical differences away in a desperate attempt to pretend there's no such thing as a defined race. Better to accept the differences but point out that they have no relevance to the inherent value of the person.

 

[bruto]

A distinction that could be debated.
The "son of Sam" murdered people because the neighbors dog told him to do it is a valid interpretation of his actions. So also is that the killer murdered people because he suffered from a mental health issue that caused him to believe (wrongly) that the neighbors dog was communicating with him.

A similar distinction can be drawn between the Nazis' use of hatred and inhumanity to further their goals, specifically through the persecution of groups of people they defined as inferior "races", and their persecution and murder of people they wrongly labelled members of a "race".

Since it is a clearly debatable issue, the backlash that Ms. Goldberg was the victim of seems reactionary, and removed from what she was actually pointing out.

If she was, for example, trying to point out the Nazis' error of race attribution she did a hell of a bad job of it.

 

[theprestige]

Only in America is race primarily a matter of skin tone. Everywhere else in the world, racist bigots understand it's more than skin deep. It's about ethnicity, heredity. It's more akin to nobility, who your bloodline can be traced to. There are physical features associated with those bloodlines, to hang the bigotry on. But real racism and real racial superiority has always been more than skin deep.

The European anti-semites didn't pick on the Jews just because they were a different race, but because they were selectively demonized as an inferior race. A scapegoat race. The Nazis were able to make common cause with Imperial Japan even though they weren't "aryans". In the long run, the Thousand-Year Reich would have come for the Japanese, too, but the racism of the day didn't demand it.

A better term for racism would probably be "ethnic bigotry".

 

[Ziggurat]

Only in America is race primarily a matter of skin tone. Everywhere else in the world, racist bigots understand it's more than skin deep. It's about ethnicity, heredity. It's more akin to nobility, who your bloodline can be traced to. There are physical features associated with those bloodlines, to hang the bigotry on. But real racism and real racial superiority has always been more than skin deep.

The Hutu vs. Tutsi violence in Rwanda is a perfect case in point. Or Chinese vs. Japanese, or... I could go on, but there's not much point.

Yeah. Skin color alone is a really reductive and stupid lens through which to view bigotry.

 

[shuttlt]

A better term for racism would probably be "ethnic bigotry".

If that term was adopted, you'd find it being co-opted and changed the same way the definition of racism has been. It would start to not count for bigotry up the privilege stack and you'd find you had to invent a new term again.

 

[shuttlt]

If she was, for example, trying to point out the Nazis' error of race attribution she did a hell of a bad job of it.

A great job if she was trying to get attention.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Whatever their genetic make up shows them to be

So most races of people are african because of the genetic diversity there? How does one ever know which exact race someone is without genetic screening?

 

[Venom]

That's just trying to hand wave obvious physical differences away in a desperate attempt to pretend there's no such thing as a defined race. Better to accept the differences but point out that they have no relevance to the inherent value of the person.

Recognizing physical differences is one thing. Grouping people based on this observation is quite another and always runs into difficulties.

 

[theprestige]

If that term was adopted, you'd find it being co-opted and changed the same way the definition of racism has been. It would start to not count for bigotry up the privilege stack and you'd find you had to invent a new term again.

Of course. This is why I'm reluctant to single out "racism" as some special form of uniquely bad bigotry.

Bigotry abounds everywhere. Ethnic bigotry, class bigotry... Where you live. Where you went to school. Making a fetish of skin-tone racism allows far too many bigots to tell themselves and others they're not really bigots since their prejudice isn't based on skin color.

 

[Warp12]

To be clear, I don't often care for her commentary. But whether she is right or wrong about the issue of "race", does her statement warrant disciplinary action? That is most important question. It is not as though she started ranting that the Holocaust did not occur.

 

[Thermal]

To be clear, I don't often care for her commentary. But whether she is right or wrong about the issue of "race", does her statement warrant disciplinary action? That is most important question. It is not as though she started ranting that the Holocaust did not occur.

If she was el white-o, methinks that comment would have ended her career.

 

[Venom]

To be clear, I don't often care for her commentary. But whether she is right or wrong about the issue of "race", does her statement warrant disciplinary action? That is most important question. It is not as though she started ranting that the Holocaust did not occur.

I'm reluctant to say it was right to suspend her. Maybe they could invite a historian or anthropologist on the show to take her to task about this.

 

[shuttlt]

If she was el white-o, methinks that comment would have ended her career.

Come on, if Bill Maher said that the slave trade wasn't really about race, as really what was going on was particular tribal groups selling members of other tribal groups to people who wanted to make a buck, and he saw it more as man’s inhumanity to man, he'd have been fine. Are blacks even a race? Trevor Noah would probably have had him on to try and smooth over any misunderstandings.

 

[Distracted1]

I'm reluctant to say it was right to suspend her. Maybe they could invite a historian or anthropologist on the show to take her to task about this.

A show that would do that would be worth watching.

 

[shuttlt]

A show that would do that would be worth watching.

They should get Ibram X Kendi on to explain it.