Whoopi Goldberg was suspended as a TV host for comments that the Holocaust was not 'about race'.

Whoopi Goldberg suspended over race row

“While Whoopi has apologised, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organisation stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities,” ABC News President Kim Godwin said in a statement.

“Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments,” Godwin said in her statement.

Goldberg made her original comments during a discussion on the show about a Tennessee school’s banning of “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Nazi death camps during World War II. She said the Holocaust was “not about race … it’s about man’s inhumanity to other man.”

Goldberg apologised hours later and again on Tuesday’s morning episode, but the original remark drew condemnation from several prominent Jewish leaders.

“My words upset so many people, which was never my intention,” she said Tuesday morning. “I understand why now and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, praised Goldberg for being outspoken over the years on social issues but said he struggled to understand her statement on the Holocaust.

Read the article by David Bauder (AP media writer) in The Canberra Times.