Fans Think Whoopi Goldberg Doubled Down on Her Holocaust Comments on ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’
Whoopi Goldberg made some highly controversial remarks about the Holocaust on a recent episode of ABC’s The View. She has since apologized on social media, and she went on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to explain her remarks. But many fans think the Sister Act star just doubled down on her comments. Here’s what Goldberg said and how fans are reacting.
Whoopi Goldberg apologized for making controversial remarks about the Holocaust on ‘The View’
On Jan. 31, co-host Whoopi Goldberg made some controversial comments about the Holocaust on an episode of ABC’s The View.
Goldberg and her co-hosts were discussing the ban of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, which is about a Holocaust survivor. The Color Purple star repeatedly said (per Daily Beast), “The Holocaust isn’t about race. It’s not about race!”
When questioned by her co-hosts what she thought the Holocaust was about, Goldberg replied, “It’s about man’s inhumanity to man, that’s what it’s about.”
Co-host Ana Navarro retorted, “But it’s about white supremacy. It’s about going after Jews and Gypsies.” Goldberg responded, “These are two white groups of people,” but co-host Sara Haines argued that “they didn’t see them as white.” Co-host Joy Behar noted that Nazis also persecuted Black people.
“But you’re missing the point! You’re missing the point,” Goldberg exclaimed. “The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. That’s the problem.”
The Girl, Interrupted star continued, “It doesn’t matter if you are Black or white because Black, white, Jews, Italians, everybody eats each other.”
Goldberg received a lot of backlash on social media for her comments, and she issued an apology on Twitter the same day her controversial comments aired.
“On today’s show, I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man.’ I should have said it is about both,” Goldberg started her online apology. After expressing support for “the Jewish people around the world,” she apologized for the “hurt” she caused.
Whoopi Goldberg tried to explain her Holocaust comments on ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’
She said Nazis “had issues with ethnicity, not with race,” and that the Holocaust “was about white on white.”
“Most of the Nazis were white people and most of the people they were attacking were white people,” Goldberg told Colbert. “So to me, I’m thinking, ‘How can you say it’s about race if you are fighting each other?’ This wasn’t – I said – this wasn’t racial. This was about white on white.”
She went on to say, “I was saying, ‘You can’t call this racism. This was evil.’ This wasn’t based on the skin – you couldn’t tell who was Jewish. They had to delve deeply to figure it out.”
Fans are reacting to the actor’s apology on social media
After Whoopi Goldberg’s appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, fans are even more upset with The View co-host for doubling down on her controversial Holocaust comments.
Some fans are defending Goldberg with tweets like, “Perhaps she was implying that there were other victims of the holocaust. For example – disabled people, homosexuals, Jehovahs Witnesses etc. It wasn’t just about one race. It was also about others that Nazi Germany considered undesirables.”
But most fans are slamming the star, saying what she said on Colbert overshadows her Twitter apology. One Twitter user wrote, “As a grandkid of holocaust survivors, I don’t see it as an apology… I’m sure that the 6 million Jewish corpses would’ve never forgive u either. Shame. Another antisemite…”
Another fan tweeted, “First day of Black History Month, what do you lead with? Whoopi Goldberg: ‘The Holocaust wasn’t racist!’” with a gif of Kenan Thompson saying, “Yikes.”
Others called for forgiveness of Goldberg while still acknowledging her comments with tweets like, “Please let’s leave Whoppi Goldberg alone, she did an amazing job correcting herself and explaining why her statement was wrong. But, please, let’s not move on from the situation where it’s not common knowledge that Holocaust was a racial problem.”
But many aren’t so quick to forgive Goldberg and are tweeting remarks like, “It’s called backlash and possible termination not the realization of a mistake.”
