Her Rule Would Always Last by Seth Chambers

Greenblatt himself admitted in a blog post that during his tenure, the ADL had changed its “racism” entry “a few years ago.” The ADL’s pre-Greenblatt definition of “racism,” according to the Jerusalem Post, reads as follows: It is “the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.” It’s the fact that the definition of “racism” that the ADL decided it would be prudent to revise was itself a revision. The hypocrisy and shamelessness on display here are not the most important aspects of this debacle.

In the wake of the controversy, the ADL hastily revised its wording and offered a more benign “interim definition.” The organization’s understanding of racism, we are made to understand, is evolving. The Holocaust couldn’t have been about race, under the ADL’s definition of the word “racism,” because American Jews cannot be victims of racism. “The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”įollow the logic: According to the Anti-Defamation League itself-the Jewish organization set up in 1915 specifically to combat anti-Semitism-Whoopi Goldberg’s remarks were accurate. That’s too bad, because if he had, Goldberg could have responded like the teenager in the classic anti-drug ad from the ’80s when confronted by his father: “You! All right? I got it from you!”įor on the very day that Goldberg made her comments about the impossibility of a conflict being racial in nature if the perpetrators and victims had similar complexions, the definition of the word “racism” on the ADL’s website read as follows: One thing Greenblatt did not do was ask Goldberg where on earth she could have gotten such a preposterous and offensive idea. Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, reprimanded Goldberg the following day on her morning program, The View.

When Whoopi Goldberg said that the Holocaust was “not about race” but rather “two white groups of people” fighting, the actress and chat-show maven was shocked by criticism she received.

Her Rule Would Always Last by Seth Chambers