Feb. 2 (UPI) — ABC News suspended “The View” host Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks Tuesday after she said the Holocaust was not about race during Monday’s show.
Kim Godwin, president of ABC News, said that Goldberg’s comments were “wrong and hurtful,” in a statement announcing the suspension.
“While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments,” Godwin said. “The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”
The 66-year-old actress and television personality apologized Monday and also addressed her remarks on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
During Monday’s episode of “The View,” Goldberg and her co-hosts were discussing the recent banning of “Maus,” a graphic novel about the Holocaust, by a school board in Tennessee when Goldberg said the Holocaust “isn’t about race.”
“It’s about man’s inhumanity to man,” she added. “These are two white groups of people.”
Her co-host Joy Behar disagreed, saying, “Well, they considered Jews a different race.”
Goldberg later apologized in a statement on Twitter.
“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. As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand corrected,” Goldberg wrote.
“The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused,” she said, adding her “sincerest apologies.”
On “The Late Show,” Goldberg explained that she approached the idea of race differently as a Black woman.
“I feel, being Black, when we talk about race it’s a very different thing to me,” Goldberg said. “As a Black person, I think of race as something people can see. So I see you and what race you are.”
“People were very angry and they said, ‘No, no, we are a race,’ and I understand,” she added. “I respect everything everyone is saying to me and I don’t want to fake apologize. I’m very upset that people misunderstood what I was saying.”
Goldberg said people are now calling her anti-Semitic and a Holocaust denier.
“I’m incredibly torn up by being told these things about myself. I get it, I accept that. And I did it to myself. This was my thought process, and I will work hard not to think that way again,” she said.
