The uproar over Whoopi Goldberg’s remarks about the Holocaust has catalyzed somber reflections by many American Jews about not only the legacy of the Holocaust but anti-Jewish discrimination in the United States and their sense of a collective identity.
The actor and TV host swiftly apologized for saying this week on ABC’s “The View” that the genocide was not about race but rather “man’s inhumanity to man,” noting in subsequent remarks that she had failed to acknowledge that the Nazis considered Jews an inferior race.
As Goldberg serves a two-week suspension from the show, a range of Jewish leaders have noted the complexity of describing how race fits into the overall concept of Jewish identity. It entails a mix of religion, nationality, ethnicity, culture and history, said Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York-based group that seeks restitution for Holocaust victims.
In the past there even were travel guides for Jews with tips on how to avoid discrimination on the road, guidebooks that preceded the 1936 debut of “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” which provided similar advice for African Americans.
Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, recalled growing up in Plano, Texas, where the handful of Jewish families, including his own, sometimes experienced antisemitism.
“We never saw ourselves in the same category as any of the white Anglo Southern Baptists,” he said. “Although we had white skin, we didn’t consider ourselves part of the white culture.”
The racial equation has only grown more complex as Jews of color — including African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans — account for a growing percentage of the overall Jewish population.
“Jews are multiethnic, multiracial,” Farkas said. “We don’t consider ourselves just a community of faith.”
Farkas said systemic discrimination against Jews in the U.S. has largely faded over the decades, but antisemitism persists and antisemitic violence over the past five years has been at its highest level in decades.
