A Response to Tim Wise' Reflections on Whoopi Goldberg

DEFINING TERMS SURROUNDING THE HOLOCAUST

Definition of anti-Semitism
: hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group
Definition of inhumanity

1a: the quality or state of being cruel or barbarous

b: a cruel or barbarous act

2: absence of warmth or geniality : IMPERSONALITY

Definition of racist:
racist
/'rasəst/
adjective
prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a
person or people on the basis of their
membership in a particular racial or ethnic group,
typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
"we are investigating complaints about racist
abuse'
noun
a person who is prejudiced against or
antagonistic toward people on the basis of their
membership in a particular racial or ethnic group,
typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
"he has been targeted by vicious racists online"

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 said.*

“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.]]]**

Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg,” she said.***

*- Ms Goldbergs EXACT WORDS WERE NEITHER RACIST NOR ANTI- SEMETIC, per the commonly accepted definitions of those terms.

**- Ms. Goldbergs FIRST APOLOGY
**- Ms. GOLDBERGS SECOND APOLOGY
*** AND, last but surely not least, her THIRD APOLOGY, in writing.

As a Christian by choice since I was 13 years old, after having come to the faith as a closeted male homosexual whose father, after serving in the horrors of War in the Korean Conflict, Americas longest continually declared war zone had responded to the horror by becoming a doppelganger of sorts to POTUS45, I paid much too high a price for my faith journey.

You see, gentle reader. My father's closeted gay and sadistic doppelganger had to be radically and completely forgiven for being my incest perpetrator when I was aged 3 to 4 years. Like so many other wounded warriors of the USA'S wars abroad, he died pretty much beloved by those inside and outside of my immediate family bubble on 4.26.2011. One of his final declarations to my mother at the end was "The chickens are coming home to roost." Uncannily, he was, like many on the ASD continuum, but undiagnosed and untreated, prescient in the extreme- plannning for the 9-11 attacks was already well underway.

Such was the legacy of Hitler****, architect of mass slaughter of the people labelling themselves Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and human beings cognitively and or developmentally disabled.
Such was the legacy of Hitler****, architect of mass slaughter of the people labelling themselves Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and human beings cognitively and or developmentally disabled. The Holocaust was about so much more than race. The USA has always taken its high achievers to task. versus using their brain power to substantiate or invalidate their statements. No one should be cancelled. Go to a library and read about ALL the persons that the Nazi’s targeted on a myriad of bases: race, sexual orientation, xenophobia, and cognitive and developmental disabilities. Then please go and beg Ms. Goldberg’s pardon. Patronize our brick-and-mortar free public library system! Do it now, as if our lives as a representative democracy depends upon your doing this one thing.

****- in WWI AND WW2

(C) VERNON NICKERSON SCHOOLCOACH 2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

https://link.medium.com/J1XoPIcyqnb
As a Jew, I know full well how incorrect Whoopi Goldberg’s recent comments about the Holocaust were — that it “wasn’t about race,” but merely a matter of man’s inhumanity to man, involving white people killing white people.

To the Nazis, Jews were a distinct race of evildoers — a biological pollutant — rather than white, despite our recent European ancestry. In that sense, she was flatly wrong. It was about race to the people who perpetrated it. The fact that their notions of race were pseudo-scientific garbage doesn’t change that.

Dear Tim Wise:

From my perspective as a 1991 Graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary with a Masters in Theology (with a Concentration in Pastoral Counseling), a Black, gay male whose sister-in-law and nephews are observant reformed Jews and practicing Evangelical Christian Urban Missionaries, I, too, along with Whoopi Goldberg am a Jew.

Full disclosure, I am also a person living with Asperger's (high- functioning), with a "mild" co-occurring touch of ADHD. I think deeply, mindfully, and try to consider all sides of an issue.

In my considered opinion, because Ms. Goldberg chose Judiasm and was not, as you have been, born a Jew, I submit her comments are in no way anti-semetic or "incorrect". This is also my scholarly and personal opinion as a man embracing an ancient wisdom/Pan African Spirituality of which Judiasm and Christianity are derivative. Someday, I hope to have the luxury of time and the imprimatur of a Ph.D. to engage in a more robust unpacking of that last statement.

Honestly, I wish the USA and the world would devote as much or more time discussing why the State of Israel is still allowed to be as murderous and abusive to the Palestinians. Or perhaps, the race war that the USA has waged since , at a minimum, whenever chattel slavery of Africans began in the Americas.

Frankly, it is far too easy, and in my not-so-humble opinion, it is also therefore Intellectually Lazy to "scapegoat" me and or Ms. Goldberg. Unfortunately, her suspension is yet another indicator of the USA'S impotent and doomed attempts to return to the halycon days of Jim Crow Segregation ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
https://link.medium.com/13I5fPhWjnb
https://link.medium.com/13I5fPhWjnb

Dear Dale W. Mitchell , WE ARE THE PROBLEM AND WE, THE PEOPLE UNITED TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION, are also the SOLUTION. Note well that Religious AND Secular Judiaism are consistent in their treatment of any and all BIPOC who convert to Judiaism and or, like our PanAfrican Ethiopian(?), Sudanese(?), Eritrean(?) brothers and sisters who claim their Jewishness by RIGHT OF BIRTH AND BIRTHPLACE. Just because Jewish folks come from a robust, ancient, and apochyphal TRADITION of being LAW FOLLOWING CITIZENS , ( and we all know too many who are Jewish and have never met a law they could not legally find a way to get around or break outright)--did not "make them right" about Sammy Davis, Jr. and Tiffany Haddish and does not make them right about Whoopi Goldberg in 2022. By the way, KUDOS TO Vintage Art Times , she is ROCKIN' THAT GOWN!💚💛💜💛💚💜💯💯💯🖖🤟👍
Those who know me well, know I have consistently given all the White folks I have Ever Known The benefit of the doubt when it comes to Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Xenophobia, sex obsessions, exploitation of BIPOC employees, and consistently poor behavioral choices, like they are Stuck On Stupid, or something! Well, as we now simply see 💯💯💯, because Donald J Trump groomed, mentored, and expertly coached them, reminding them of what they ( and we) have always known, they no longer even use their smarts to lie to our faces. Since POTUS45, they now spit in our faces, figuratively and literally because they have paid a whole bunch of researchers to weaponize one virus from the family of "common cold" viruses. Yes, the last 6 words of the previous sentence are NOVEL CORONAVIRUSES. From the start of HIV/AIDS ( an ongoing global killer, also begun from relatively benign extant microorganisms that turned "angry and virulent over time") through the OMICRON Variant of the COVID-19 mutation of a Novel Coronavirus, White folks too, have seroconverted. They are three groups , in descending order from most visceral: verifiably racist, complicit by their silence and feigned ignorance with the verifiably racist, and, the smallest group, true/ moral/ ethical/ empathic allies of BIPOC. Here is where mathematics must be respected: statistically, White folks, i.e., those with the least melanated skin, are a minority of the 700 million souls called human beings on Planet Earth. So that last group our allies, is really small. They have, from before recorded time, had to collaborate, reach consensus, and organize to obtain and consolidate generational wealth and political power. They do everything "talked"about in the Opening Title of the 1963 sci-fi television series " The Outer Limits". Fun fact: There are at least 530 different Pentateuch ( OT BOOKS OF JEWISH LAW) on the free downloadable BIBLE GATEWAY APP to validate my opening comments, so it is appropriate to end this lesson where it began.👍🤟🖖