Why I Stand with Whoopi

Anyone paying attention has noticed that Whoopi Goldberg was suspended from The View for two weeks for “her wrong and hurtful comments” about the Holocaust.

Of course, we have heard a lot about hurtful comments of late; much of it coming from adults who were pandered to as kids and are now trying to recreate the coddling of their parents in their universities, jobs, news feeds, and social media hangouts. So before jumping onto the “Cancel Whoopi” bandwagon, perhaps we should examine what Goldberg actually said to see whether the accusations against are accurate:

Let’s be truthful about it because [the] Holocaust isn’t about race. It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.

One can see why people might be upset about this; throughout history Jews have been attacked simply because they are Jewish. Yet, it is impossible to argue against Goldberg’s third sentence. The German extermination of more than six million Jews is one of the most inhumane man against man acts in world history. Though we can think of some others:

• the murder by Pol Pot and the Communists of 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians, nearly one-quarter of the nation’s population, from 1975 to 1979
• perhaps as many as 1 million Tutsis killed in Rwanda in 1994 by the Hutu nationalists
• the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks during World War I which resulted in perhaps 1 million killed
• the 5 million or more Russians–including about 4 million Ukrainians–starved to death by Stalin and the Communists in the Soviet Union between 1931 and 1934
• the more than 63 million American babies killed in (or near) the womb since the Supreme Court of the United States made abortion legal in all 50 states in 1973

As horrendous as these acts are, it is no mystery why they occur:

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

“Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.”

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:10-18)

The great tragedy of humanity is that in our fallen state we are inhumane. Yes, we still bear the image of God, but it is greatly distorted. As Jonathan Edwards wrote,

… all mankind are by nature in a state of total ruin, both with respect to the moral evil of which they are the subjects, and the afflictive evil to which they are exposed, the one as the consequence and punishment of the other. (The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended)

Thus, we use our God-given ability to act with purpose to murder of millions of our fellow image bearers, be they Ukrainians peasants or black American babies in the womb.

Getting back to Whoopi, we also use our ability to think and reason to distort Scripture in such a way as to leave God’s original meaning to be unintelligible once we get through with it. And the more we do that, as Edwards noted, the more God’s wrath causes us to double down on it. And perhaps nowhere are we doing that today as much as we do it when it comes to race.

Almost everyone knows about Critical Race Theory, though far fewer know what that term means. The basic ingredient of CRT is intersectionality—the idea that identities such as race, class, gender, and disability intersect in a way that displays societal inequality. But only certain identities deemed to be oppressed are allowed to operate within this construct. Whites generally, and white males in particular, are not allowed in–except, of course, if the white male identifies as gay or, even better, a female.

Emory University Professor George Yancy articulated the premise of CRT in his “Dear White America” letter in the The New York Times: “If you are white, and you are reading this letter, I ask that you don’t run to seek shelter from your own racism. Don’t hide from your responsibility. Rather, begin, right now, to practice being vulnerable.”

This white racism, from which all whites suffer, stems from yesterday’s white racism, according to Mark Whitehouse, writing for Bloomberg. “Whites start out with an advantage: They tend to get more and larger inheritances. Also, generations of discrimination—including redlining, mass incarceration and predatory finance—have prevented blacks from building up wealth.”

The Virginia governor’s race played a role in bringing the teaching of CRT in the public schools to light. But CRT concepts can be found in schools across the nation, such as Grapevine-Colleyville ISD in North Texas. Training programs for teachers included helping them see things through a “critical race lens.” And also helped them identify various privileges they or their students may have had, including gender privilege (“you know which bathroom to use at all times”) and white privilege (“you studied the culture and history of your ancestors in school”).

Unfortunately, many Christians have also bought into this concept. For instance, a United Methodist Church resolution on White Privilege in the United States read, in part, “European Americans enjoy a broad range of privileges denied to persons of color in our society, privileges that often permit them to dominate others who do not enjoy such privileges.”

Presbyterian Church in America Pastor Timothy LeCroy similarly confessed his inherent racism, “You see, I didn’t hate Black people, but I was still a racist. I was a racist because I looked down on African Americans. I stereotyped them. I didn’t seek to know them or understand them. I may have never called them names or raised a Confederate flag or done anything overtly racist, but I was racist nonetheless—racist in ways that I am only now coming to understand.”

This is not the way the Bible tells us to understand the differences between people, however. In John 7:24, Jesus is judged for healing a man on the Sabbath. But He does not tell those who are judging Him not to judge him. Instead, He tells them, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

In Revelation 5:9, John explains his vision: “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.” While one might certainly infer that there are individuals of different skin color in this great multitude, the focus of this passage is not on skin color or race but on the clothing and accoutrements that identify them with Jesus Christ.

Of course, not everyone has been saved by grace and has their identity in Christ as Lord and Savior. But in Matthew 28:19-20, Christ tasked Christians to rectify this problem: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” It is worth noting that Christ calls Christians to bring the people of all nations to Him, regardless of their nationality and, by extension, their ethnicity or race.

Goldberg expressed this Martin Luther King, Jr.-like, biblical perspective of color blindness in her remarks about the Holocaust, “It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.” While there is no doubt that people have often mistreated others because of the color of their skin–and this was certainly the case with the Holocaust, they have just as often–or more often–mistreated other people because of where they live, how wealthy they are, their roles in the marketplace, what they believe, who (or what) they worship, or other differences that have nothing to do with race. In other words, they mistreated people because of their inhumanity.

Not surprisingly, Goldberg has not been entirely consistent in this perspective. In 2014, she lambasted fellow The View co-host Rosie O’Donnell, telling her, “You are a white lady telling me what is racist to you.” Here, Goldberg claims that a difference of opinion is racist, out of line with her comments about the Holocaust.

Interestingly, though, on the same show she said “I just see … as stupid” what another cohost saw as racist. And she later said, “America is not just a racist country, because there are white people who get it. That is why I will not accept the blanket statement that America is racist.”

No doubt there are a lot of things that Goldberg and I would disagree on. But if I had to choose between racism and inhumanity as the foundation of any act of hatred and violence in this world–big or little, I’d choose inhumanity every time. Because the Bible consistently focuses on our inhumanity, i.e., the lack of our conformity with our being made in God’s image, when addressing sin. So count me as standing with Whoopi.