Whoopi Goldberg’s racialist claim: what’s wrong with her (and others)

The racist obsession of the Nazis led them to measure the physical characteristics of the Jews to "prove" that they were an inferior race (Source: Getty Images collection).

Whoopi Goldberg saying that the Holocaust was not about race is revealing on the skin colour obsession of a certain progressive minded vision of the world. She said – apologizing afterward - that the genocide perpetrated against the Jews was a question of “whites killing whites.” The key word is “white.” The actress and TV host was not dismissing the gravity of the Shoah. She was trying to convey (wrongly) that the question of race was not the issue there. For her, race is about skin colour, therefore, the motivation of the Nazis for destroying the Jewish people was not racial. 

Besides the ignorance of her claim (the Nuremberg laws were fundamentally racist based on the premise that the Jews were an inferior race), what Goldberg said reflects on an idea that is very common in the “social justice” camp: the main feature defining human relations are body traits such as the colour of the skin (that’s according to this view, again wrongly, the foundation of the “race differences”). This obsession about the race, or exaggerated racialism, explains the problematic factually and morally assertion that Goldberg made in her TV show. Since, according to her limited view, the Jews killed by the Nazis looked “white,” then therefore the issue was not a racist genocide, but a massacre motivated for other reasons.

The racialist obsession has also influenced the DIE policies (Diversity, Inclusion and Equity). The racialist perspective dominates the normative prescriptions of these policies. The racialist lens is also a way to judge people and condemn them, as done by those looking for pictures on the Internet of the signatories of a public letter to see how many are “white.” Or the podcast focused on discussing the skin colour of those defending academic freedom and freedom of expression. 

Racism is a real problem affecting real people of colour. The question is how we can better fight the racial prejudices. I don’t think racializing the conversation is a positive path towards ending discrimination and hate. On the contrary, the racialized views incite hate, polarize societies and miss the universal claim that all human beings are equal with the same rights and dignity.