Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended from The View over her on-air comment that the Holocaust was “not about race.”
“Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments,” ABC News President Kim Godwin said in a statement provided to HuffPost on Tuesday.
“While Whoopi has apologised, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organisation stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”
During a discussion on the talk show about a Tennessee school board’s controversial decision this month to remove Maus, Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from the eighth-grade curriculum, Whoopi argued that the Holocaust was “not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man” and that it involved “two white groups of people.”
Prominent Jewish organisations, including the Auschwitz Memorial and Anti Defamation League, criticised her comment.
“The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people ― who they deemed to be an inferior race,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote in a tweet directed to the Oscar-winning actor.
Whoopi issued a statement on Monday evening offering her “sincerest apologies.”
“The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never [waver]. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused,” she wrote.