So educational. Thanks Michael. What's interesting about Goldberg is that back when she was doing movies I remember reading a quote from her that essentially said she wished not for Hollywood to make more parts for "black" people. But that they would just hire more black people for any role. Make the roles less "about" the black experience and more organically inclusive. Just like "Yeah, this part if for a middle age woman. Doesn't make a difference if she's black, latin or white."
This is my problem with the current push for "black voices" in media and entertainment. It's actually become more segregationist. You open up Hulu or Netflix now and, post George Floyd, "Black Stories" is it's own category. Why can't people, (right, left, "woke" or not) see that this is just more ghettoization?
I know this is off topic from her holocaust comment, but it's related. "Race" as a concept is such a construct that people from Hitler to Whoopi, (no, I'm not comparing them, I'm contrasting them) can come up with totally different yet equally fake concepts that seem to make sense only if you accept the initial premise. That premise being that there's something essentially different about us.
There isn't. Genetics is real. Skin color is real. Race is not.
But racism is indeed real. And every time we think we've killed it, it comes back to life like the shark in Jaws. What brings racism back to life? The very concept of race. You can't kill racism without first killing race. And to do that? We're gonna' need a bigger boat.
It might be useful and important to add - if your research confirms this - that when the Nazis were looking around for ways to implement racist policies in Germany, they turned to the U.S., which they found provided perfect models and examples.
Good essay, Michael. I mostly agree with you on it. I do not think Whoopi should have been suspended. Nor should she be fired. Those who call for either are just misguided.
Is being Jewish a race? I always thought that it was a religious or ethnic category, not a racial category. Was I wrong about that?
There is no doubt that the Nazis thought being Jewish was a race which should be suppressed, tortured, and exterminated.
Whoopi was certainly correct that the Holocaust was about man's inhumanity to man, but was she really wrong when she said that it wasn't about race. That statement could just be interpreted as "The Nazis were wrong to consider being a Jew a race."
"Racism" has been wrongly broadened in its meaning.
Michael, if I may use your first name, I have really come to admire and rely on your thoughts, research and insights. As Douglas Murray says, everything you point out substantiates understandings that we all knew to be true up until a few days ago (in this case about the ignorant use of racial animus in driving the Holocaust). Now for some reason, we need to relearn these truths all over again. Everyone should accept Goldberg's apology, even if imperfect, but it would be so constructive for her to go one step further and acknowledge what you factually point out, that these current CRT theologies have so dumbed down the understanding we collectively have about race that someone like Goldberg, who clearly aspires to some form of enlightenment, could wind up being so ignorantly and actively deluded, specifically as a consequence of this CRT hubris. She won't do that, but wow it would be impactful if she did. Without your saying it, I interpret that as your hope in your excellent piece. I am very happy with my paid subscription, and I'm glad you're out there thinking for us.
Side note, from what I can gather, Maus wasn't actually banned anywhere. That seems to be a misunderstanding. As Matt Shapiro writes in his Polimath substack [1]:
"That instinct kicked in when I heard that Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, had been banned from a Tennessee school. I hate bans. I hate the idea of having access to a book one day and then having that access revoked the next. That bespeaks an attitude that doesn’t trust the audience to their own judgement but demands that some ideas or forms of art are too frightening or dangerous to allow free access to them. Everyone ran with the same phrasing for this story. Every news article said it was either “banned” or “removed from classrooms”.
But eventually someone alerted me to the fact that this isn’t what happened at all. Maus wasn’t banned. It was simply not chosen as an anchor text for a planned eighth-grade curriculum on the Holocaust. [2]"
_________________________
That said, I had actually never heard of Maus before, so this "banned-but-actually-wasn't-banned-but-got-spread-on-the-news" response brought it to my attention, and in 1-2 months when Amazon restocks it I should have the copy I ordered yesterday.
Also, your quote:
"I guess two weeks is enough reflective time to educate oneself on the Holocaust, a subject to which scholars devote entire careers."
'Great article Michael. It's always a pleasure to expand my learning horizons from your deep well of knowledge.
I'm wondering what your thoughts are regarding how Europeans, & Germans in particular, thought about issues of race before Darwin and his ideas of Natural Selection, etc, were in ascendancy? Were the majority populations throughout Europe xenophobic whenever they were faced with having to deal with immigrants, refugees, etc., who were noticeably different from themselves, and moved into these geographic regions over the centuries? Isn't it a fairly natural feature of all human groups (and an evolutionarily derived necessity) to be wary, or even hostile, to strangers seemingly establishing a foothold in areas previously occupied by a certain homogenous group? The reason I bring this up is because there needs to be an answer to a burning question regarding the Holocaust which seems to always be in the background but never actually discussed, which is : Were the German people, as well as their culture, ideas, and actions leading up to and including Hitler, basically "evil" to the core from the get-go for decades or centuries before WWII? Or was the horrible chain of events leading up to the euthanasia, persecution, slave labor and genocidal programs possible for any group of humans who would have been in the same degree of industrial development coupled with xenophobia and the breakdown of moral & ethical systems of human empathy? In simpler terms, were the people who perpetrated the Holocaust basically flawed for many generations before it happened? Or was this outcome the predictable extension of multiple converging factors which might befall any group of humans at any time in history (past, present, or future)? I'd be interested in hearing your take on whether or not the Holocaust was orchestrated by a horrible, *evil* group of humans? Or if all humans have this potential for horror & *evil* within them and can act on it if their group feels sufficiently threatened in certain ways. Thanks. QR
The irony is that even Jewish organizations have adjusted their definitions of racism to conform to the white --> BIPOC paradigm. In 2020 amidst the George Floyd aftermath, the Anti-Defamation League changed their definition of racism to "The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people." (https://www.adl.org/racism)
It seems there are multiple different ways to think about race. Is it Black Yellow White and Red? Is it Semitic, Hamitic, etc.? Are Inca of a different Race than Aztec, or Algonquin different than Navaho? Are Celts a different race than Germanic, and Finns and Basques a different race? It seems that often "race" is a construct to use to create separation, though it can be useful in looking for tendencies of physical attributes (lactose intolerance, sickle cell disease or Thallassemia, celiac disease, risk of skin cancers, thigh bone length, muscle quality, and many other factors, though none are absolute due to the fact that NONE of us are exclusively anything). So what she said could be taken as true or false depending on the definition you use-- if you use the one that the Nazis used it would be false, but if you use that taught in American schools in the 1950s it would be true. I just wish that race would not be regarded as pejorative in the first place, but more like where you grow up or blood type.
Much ado about nothing. If the only view you can have is the one you are told to have then there are no views just religion. And it really is all about tribes, everyone wants to be in a tribe and every tribe wants to be special and better then other tribes, then all that is needed for hate is some reason the other tribes are bad, any reason will do...
MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski said, "This is something that is just going to start getting ridiculous. I mean, if Whoopi Goldberg is canceled, that would be the end... All this cancel culture is getting so out-of-hand." Yet, just days before MSNBC tried to get Spotify to cancel Joe Rogan just for talking to people with different points of view. And rarely does a day go by without the major media outlets demanding the cancellation of Dan Bongino, Dave Portnoy, Tucker Carlson and anyone else who isn't a leftist supporter of the Democratic Party.
Whoopi will have a two week paid vacation. If she were a white man or a conservative, she would be made to disappear and never work again.
Goldberg said something incredibly, really incredibly stupid. But perhaps she didn't really mean it (that is, perhaps she is just too stupid to realize that what she said is stupid and offensive), and she did apologize. So my first reaction would be to forgive and forget.
But Goldberg's "woke" friends keep trying to cancel people like Jordan Peterson, JK Rowking, and now Joe Rogan, for saying things that offend them. So I guess tasting their own medicine will do the wokes some good. Perhaps they'll become more reasonable (well, of course they won't, but optimism feels good).
So educational. Thanks Michael. What's interesting about Goldberg is that back when she was doing movies I remember reading a quote from her that essentially said she wished not for Hollywood to make more parts for "black" people. But that they would just hire more black people for any role. Make the roles less "about" the black experience and more organically inclusive. Just like "Yeah, this part if for a middle age woman. Doesn't make a difference if she's black, latin or white."
This is my problem with the current push for "black voices" in media and entertainment. It's actually become more segregationist. You open up Hulu or Netflix now and, post George Floyd, "Black Stories" is it's own category. Why can't people, (right, left, "woke" or not) see that this is just more ghettoization?
I know this is off topic from her holocaust comment, but it's related. "Race" as a concept is such a construct that people from Hitler to Whoopi, (no, I'm not comparing them, I'm contrasting them) can come up with totally different yet equally fake concepts that seem to make sense only if you accept the initial premise. That premise being that there's something essentially different about us.
There isn't. Genetics is real. Skin color is real. Race is not.
But racism is indeed real. And every time we think we've killed it, it comes back to life like the shark in Jaws. What brings racism back to life? The very concept of race. You can't kill racism without first killing race. And to do that? We're gonna' need a bigger boat.
It might be useful and important to add - if your research confirms this - that when the Nazis were looking around for ways to implement racist policies in Germany, they turned to the U.S., which they found provided perfect models and examples.
Good essay, Michael. I mostly agree with you on it. I do not think Whoopi should have been suspended. Nor should she be fired. Those who call for either are just misguided.
Is being Jewish a race? I always thought that it was a religious or ethnic category, not a racial category. Was I wrong about that?
There is no doubt that the Nazis thought being Jewish was a race which should be suppressed, tortured, and exterminated.
Whoopi was certainly correct that the Holocaust was about man's inhumanity to man, but was she really wrong when she said that it wasn't about race. That statement could just be interpreted as "The Nazis were wrong to consider being a Jew a race."
"Racism" has been wrongly broadened in its meaning.
Michael, if I may use your first name, I have really come to admire and rely on your thoughts, research and insights. As Douglas Murray says, everything you point out substantiates understandings that we all knew to be true up until a few days ago (in this case about the ignorant use of racial animus in driving the Holocaust). Now for some reason, we need to relearn these truths all over again. Everyone should accept Goldberg's apology, even if imperfect, but it would be so constructive for her to go one step further and acknowledge what you factually point out, that these current CRT theologies have so dumbed down the understanding we collectively have about race that someone like Goldberg, who clearly aspires to some form of enlightenment, could wind up being so ignorantly and actively deluded, specifically as a consequence of this CRT hubris. She won't do that, but wow it would be impactful if she did. Without your saying it, I interpret that as your hope in your excellent piece. I am very happy with my paid subscription, and I'm glad you're out there thinking for us.
Side note, from what I can gather, Maus wasn't actually banned anywhere. That seems to be a misunderstanding. As Matt Shapiro writes in his Polimath substack [1]:
"That instinct kicked in when I heard that Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, had been banned from a Tennessee school. I hate bans. I hate the idea of having access to a book one day and then having that access revoked the next. That bespeaks an attitude that doesn’t trust the audience to their own judgement but demands that some ideas or forms of art are too frightening or dangerous to allow free access to them. Everyone ran with the same phrasing for this story. Every news article said it was either “banned” or “removed from classrooms”.
But eventually someone alerted me to the fact that this isn’t what happened at all. Maus wasn’t banned. It was simply not chosen as an anchor text for a planned eighth-grade curriculum on the Holocaust. [2]"
_________________________
That said, I had actually never heard of Maus before, so this "banned-but-actually-wasn't-banned-but-got-spread-on-the-news" response brought it to my attention, and in 1-2 months when Amazon restocks it I should have the copy I ordered yesterday.
Also, your quote:
"I guess two weeks is enough reflective time to educate oneself on the Holocaust, a subject to which scholars devote entire careers."
*chef's kiss*
[1] https://polimath.substack.com/p/sometimes-we-hold-the-line
[2] https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_file/1818370/Called_Meeting_Minutes_1-10-22.pdf
'Great article Michael. It's always a pleasure to expand my learning horizons from your deep well of knowledge.
I'm wondering what your thoughts are regarding how Europeans, & Germans in particular, thought about issues of race before Darwin and his ideas of Natural Selection, etc, were in ascendancy? Were the majority populations throughout Europe xenophobic whenever they were faced with having to deal with immigrants, refugees, etc., who were noticeably different from themselves, and moved into these geographic regions over the centuries? Isn't it a fairly natural feature of all human groups (and an evolutionarily derived necessity) to be wary, or even hostile, to strangers seemingly establishing a foothold in areas previously occupied by a certain homogenous group? The reason I bring this up is because there needs to be an answer to a burning question regarding the Holocaust which seems to always be in the background but never actually discussed, which is : Were the German people, as well as their culture, ideas, and actions leading up to and including Hitler, basically "evil" to the core from the get-go for decades or centuries before WWII? Or was the horrible chain of events leading up to the euthanasia, persecution, slave labor and genocidal programs possible for any group of humans who would have been in the same degree of industrial development coupled with xenophobia and the breakdown of moral & ethical systems of human empathy? In simpler terms, were the people who perpetrated the Holocaust basically flawed for many generations before it happened? Or was this outcome the predictable extension of multiple converging factors which might befall any group of humans at any time in history (past, present, or future)? I'd be interested in hearing your take on whether or not the Holocaust was orchestrated by a horrible, *evil* group of humans? Or if all humans have this potential for horror & *evil* within them and can act on it if their group feels sufficiently threatened in certain ways. Thanks. QR
Interesting. i'd make the point that Darwin was himself not a "social Darwinist."
The irony is that even Jewish organizations have adjusted their definitions of racism to conform to the white --> BIPOC paradigm. In 2020 amidst the George Floyd aftermath, the Anti-Defamation League changed their definition of racism to "The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people." (https://www.adl.org/racism)
It seems there are multiple different ways to think about race. Is it Black Yellow White and Red? Is it Semitic, Hamitic, etc.? Are Inca of a different Race than Aztec, or Algonquin different than Navaho? Are Celts a different race than Germanic, and Finns and Basques a different race? It seems that often "race" is a construct to use to create separation, though it can be useful in looking for tendencies of physical attributes (lactose intolerance, sickle cell disease or Thallassemia, celiac disease, risk of skin cancers, thigh bone length, muscle quality, and many other factors, though none are absolute due to the fact that NONE of us are exclusively anything). So what she said could be taken as true or false depending on the definition you use-- if you use the one that the Nazis used it would be false, but if you use that taught in American schools in the 1950s it would be true. I just wish that race would not be regarded as pejorative in the first place, but more like where you grow up or blood type.
Much ado about nothing. If the only view you can have is the one you are told to have then there are no views just religion. And it really is all about tribes, everyone wants to be in a tribe and every tribe wants to be special and better then other tribes, then all that is needed for hate is some reason the other tribes are bad, any reason will do...
MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski said, "This is something that is just going to start getting ridiculous. I mean, if Whoopi Goldberg is canceled, that would be the end... All this cancel culture is getting so out-of-hand." Yet, just days before MSNBC tried to get Spotify to cancel Joe Rogan just for talking to people with different points of view. And rarely does a day go by without the major media outlets demanding the cancellation of Dan Bongino, Dave Portnoy, Tucker Carlson and anyone else who isn't a leftist supporter of the Democratic Party.
Whoopi will have a two week paid vacation. If she were a white man or a conservative, she would be made to disappear and never work again.
Goldberg said something incredibly, really incredibly stupid. But perhaps she didn't really mean it (that is, perhaps she is just too stupid to realize that what she said is stupid and offensive), and she did apologize. So my first reaction would be to forgive and forget.
But Goldberg's "woke" friends keep trying to cancel people like Jordan Peterson, JK Rowking, and now Joe Rogan, for saying things that offend them. So I guess tasting their own medicine will do the wokes some good. Perhaps they'll become more reasonable (well, of course they won't, but optimism feels good).
Thank you.