Whoopi Goldberg got it wrong, obviously. By classifying German Nazis and their Jewish victims as “two groups of white people”, she denied the racism of the Holocaust, saying it was a case of “man’s inhumanity” to others. It seems absurd to have to correct her, but knowledge of the Holocaust is weak. In 1935, almost seven years before the industrial-scale murder of Europe’s Jews was planned at the Wannsee Conference, “race defilers” were paraded in Berlin and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour prohibited marriage or any sexual relations between Jew and non-Jew. There is no doubt that Hitler’s regime saw the Jews as a pestilential race to be exterminated.
Goldberg reportedly adopted her stage name in solidarity with the Jewish people, but she appears more influenced by critical race theory, which is woke neo-racism with an anti-Semitic bent. CRC is marketed as an anti-racist project but its crude division between “white supremacy” and “people of colour” encourages an unhealthy and divisive fixation on race. It runs counter to the stirring aspiration of Martin Luther King, when he said: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.” King’s stress on character acknowledges the truth that we as individuals are confronted with moral choices. It is this personal responsibility that effective leaders can appeal to, to reduce bigotry and communal tension. CRC, by contrast, ignores human autonomy by making racism a permanent stain on the “white supremacist” oppressor group. This racism is said to be structural, inherent in society and its institutions, and for this reason CRC cannot offer any practical reform or hope.
Read the editorial in The Australian.