Give Whoopi a Break

 Mom threw down the gauntlet and I'm going to take it: my response to the Whoopi Goldberg race scandal. My views are mine alone, and they may not be popular with everyone. But, well, since when has that stopped me from sharing?

Race. It's a social construct. Different times and different places define "race" differently. Just look at past censuses or at modern-day international ones. If you ever feel like jumping into a cultural landmine, look at the Wikipedia page on "Race and Ethnicity in Brazil"; at one point, they had legal designations for over 30 different delineations of races.

Even if they are not based on science, however, social constructs have a real effect. Think about money (why are those greenish papers valuable?); even if we establish that money's value isn't in the material tokens, but rather in the exchange they allow, we still know how much power money has in our lives. Race has had all too much of a detrimental effect on too many lives. However, that effect varies from era to era and time to time.

Race definitions in Nazi Germany were not the same as they are in the USA in 2022. Hitler and his henchmen (many of them ordinary citizens) aimed to destroy Judaism and Jewishness-- but above all, he wanted to end the Jewish "race". Jewish people had their "race" listed on ID cards, and their career and mobility options were limited because of it. In contrast, people of the "Aryan" race and German ethnicity were exalted by the Nazi government. (I also put the word "Aryan" in quotes because the Aryan people originally were those who settled in Southeast Asia...a little different from Hitler's Teutonic blonds.)

In short, Hitler's government was an aspiring empire with a goal of creating a Master Race and of destructing members of races and subcultures he disdained. Race, for Hitler, wasn't a matter of skin color. It was a matter of fictional expectations for nose size, hair thickness and genetic connections.

In terms of skin color, 1940s Europe was not as diverse as the world we now live in now. In fact, one of the survivors I interviewed for my doctorate described a key observation he had when being rescued by the American Red Cross: his savior was a black man. This was the first black man he had seen, and so to him, he was an angel. When he eventually moved to the United States, he couldn't understand why there was so much prejudice against the black people. (I still don't understand that.)

The United States has a lot of diversity in terms of skin-tone, but we are also a patchwork nation that has many communities that suffer from de facto segregation. The racial differences that have the most power in our society now (and I wish they didn't) are based on visual differences like skin color and eye shape. After the Holocaust, the notion of considering Judaism a race has become mostly taboo. We want to distance ourself from the thought patterns of the Nazis.

Many Jewish people who came to the United States after the war (and many who were here before) chose to cast aside the traditions of their shtetls and other Old World communities. With so many people focused on moving forward and forgetting the horrors, secular Judaism became more and more mainstream in the US. (It had already been on that path prior to the second World War, but the Holocaust cemented that.). Some sects of Judaism became more religious, but the greatest numbers became Jewish by diet or dance, Jewish by holiday or self-proclamation. I'm a product of Christmas Tree Judaism. My guess is that many of you are, too.

Here's the thing: in the US, if Jewish people wanted to cast aside all parts of their outside Jewishness, they can. Yes, I "look Jewish", but there are lots of people with curly hair and strong noses who aren't Jewish, too. Yes, my 23andme ancestry test shows that I'm 99% Ashkenazi, which could point to a kind of "race". However, I don't think people look at me and immediately register "Jew". Instead, they probably register "chubby woman with a smile and loud voice." If I'm subject to prejudice because of my Jewishness, it's because people know that I'm Jewish based on what I say or do. I don't want to hide it, but if I wanted to, I could.

People with different skin colors etc. can't choose to keep their "race" secret. I dream of a world where nobody would even want to consider hiding part of an identity due to prejudice. I cringe at saying that I could hide part of who I am and I don't want my beautiful friends with all sorts of ranges of chocolate skin or crescent moon eyes to feel like they wish they could hide their appearance. But in the world we live right now, people are judged still by their appearances, and one of those quick judgements is about race.

So, when Whoopi Goldberg -- an African American woman who self-identifies as a non-practicing Jew-- said that the Holocaust was not about race, I think I know what she was trying to say. She botched it, true, but I think she was trying to get at the difference in definition of Race then and Race now. The Holocaust wasn't about skin color. It wasn't about a visible thing. It was about power and greed and prejudice and assumptions and a societal construct of race that is different from today's societal construct.

I don't like to hear different marginalized groups spar with one another based on a hierarchy of suffering. Yes, the Jewish people have suffered...and continue to. Yes, the African American people have suffered... and continue to. (I could say this about many other groups too.) And yet, thank you Maya Angelou, we rise. We can lift one another if we see our shared humanity. This humanity transcends any definition of race.

Give Whoopi a break. Language is limited and life is complicated.

Written 2/1/2022