Whoopi Goldberg made headlines recently when she stated that the holocaust was a terrible event, but not an example of racism. Joy Behar, who rarely disagrees with Whoopi, pushed back that the Nazi’s certainly felt that it was a race-based decision – pointing out that they publicly pushed the narrative that Jews were an inferior race that needed to be eradicated. Whoopi didn’t get it.
The reason that Whoopi and other black activists don’t like to discuss topics like the holocaust, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Mao in China, the Guatemalan genocide in the early 1980s, the Rwandan genocide, Serbian murders of Bosnian Muslims in the 1990’s, and the current situation with the Uighers, is that they don’t like any competition for the role of the world’s biggest victims.
I remember speaking to a woman about her daughter’s divorce. I said something like “divorce is always a tough time, not only for the couple but for both families.” The woman, not liking that I compared her daughter’s divorce to other divorces, replied, “but hers was so much worse than everyone else’s because of all the lying.” I remember thinking, sarcastically, “yeah, that’s why your daughter’s is worse. No other divorce has included partners who were untruthful with each other.” She reminded me of the character, Topper, from the Dilbert comic strip by Scott Adams – you know the guy that always has a story to top your story?
When the phrase Black Lives Matter first emerged as a part of the national dialogue, I was confused why so many black activists would become enraged when someone asked, “don’t All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter?” I saw a black ESPN commentator go ballistic when a guest said something about the number of black teenagers who are murdered each year by other black teenagers. The commentator was adamant that BLM was not about them, it was only about police brutality.
It wasn’t until I saw headlines about the University of North Carolina considering adding Nikole Hannah-Jones to its faculty and began reading more about the 1619 Project that the lightbulb came on. To these social justice, BLM activists, the world begins in 1619. All history revolves around and is subordinate to the story of African slavery in North America.
Try to talk about the exploitation of coal miners in Tennessee and Kentucky in the late 19th, early 20th century? It wasn’t based on racism, our experience was worse. Bring up the challenges the Irish and Scotch-Irish faced when they first arrived in New York during the industrial revolution? White people beating white people or refusing to hire them is not racist, ours was worse. Try to discuss the horrors of the Holocaust? White people killing white people is bad, but not racist. What we went through was, therefore worse. Topper.
It is difficult to debate one of these people, because, like Whoopi, they are simply unwilling to see a world that is not African American centric and one where African Americans are not exploited. They like to use the term, “people of color” which basically means all the people in the world except for white people. But even this is subject to change if a “people of color” are perceived to be doing well. The University of Maryland recently separated out Asians from other “people of color” in a graph and lumped them in with whites. The sole purpose was to widen the performance gap in the graph to reinforce the construct that “people of color” are severely disadvantaged.
It seems illogical to stake out a position as being a group who is exploited and marginalized such that no amount of social change can ever achieve a level of equity that the group would see as acceptable. But I guess this position does benefit some people in the short-term, even if it hurts their group in the long-term.