Reply to Whoopi says the Holocaust was not about race

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Judaism is not a race, it is an ethnicity that does, for some, incorporate a blood lineage. But, there are  others that practice Judaism, who are not genetically linked to these ethnic groups- and Jews can be just about any race. [b]However,  the Jews in Europe were murdered as they were deemed to be an inferior race by the Nazis, so it was  about Hitler's misconception of race, and it was about his determination to create  a master race. So it was racial. [/b]
 [/quote]

I'm bumping this for the poster who said they grew up in the South and seems to genuinely want to understand the debate, because this is the best description I've seen in the entire thread.

With that said, this is a nuanced argument. It requires a pretty specific understanding of Hitler's motivations as well as the degree to which "race" has been understood/deployed across different periods of time.

Jews are not a race by the current, North American, definition of race. They were a race by Hitlers understanding and rhetoric. To understand that, you need to understand that the meaning of the word race has shifted across time and geography, and remains a social construct.

I'm not sure I'm ready to come down on Goldberg too hard for not having that nuanced understanding. [/quote]

South poster here. This helps. So why are people coming down on Whoopi? If this what most people understand?

And do Jews want to be considered white or not? The ones that look white I mean? Sorry if I’m not articulating that correctly? I understand that race is a social construct and therefore that’s why I thought the Holocaust was about religion because I thought being Jewish was a religion. Again, I hadn’t studied it much. [/quote]

Well, now we are getting into really tricky territory.

There are Jews who are genetically linked to one another (ethnicity) and most of the Jews here in the United States are from one specific sub-group (Eastern European, so Ashkenazi). There are existing tensions within the Jewish community stemming from Jews of color (African American, Sephardic, Ethiopian) feeling like there's no room for them in the American understanding of Judaism, and facing subtle and not-subtle racism from the predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish community in the United States.* So the backlash was perceived by some as being led by the dominant Jewish group (white presenting Ashkenazis) against a Black woman who has publicly said that she identifies as Jewish.

* Here we have to take a small detour and explain that there are a lot of flavors of Judaism in the United States, and the problems with race within those "flavors" are going to be more or less of an issue depending on a bunch of factors.

As to your question about whether Jews want to be considered white or not? Depends on the Jew, but most young Ashkenazis as this point recognize that they benefit from white privilege even if they are impacted by Antisemitism. [/quote]

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