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Notes:

• https://libquotes.com/adolf-hitler/quote/lbu5i3k
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhITfM4bqO8
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdkhVQZGSSU

Transcription
Note: This is an automated transcription. It is not perfect but for most part adequate.

Well, also, if you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it, because the Holocaust isn’t about race.

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG, and we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear your view of the cross.

This is episode 86 of the Removing Barriers podcast. And in this episode, we will be discussing Whoopi’s comment on the Holocaust and race.

Hi, this is Jay MCG and I would like for you to help us remove barriers by going to removingbarriers.Net and subscribing to receive all things removing barriers. If you’d like to take your efforts a bit further and help us keep the mics on, consider donating at removingbarriers.net/donate. Removing Barriers, a clear view of the cross.

But before we get into all that, let’s talk a little bit about the background and what would be said. So on the daytime TV show The View, the Ladies, the panelists were discussing whether schools should be banning books from their curriculum because they make students uncomfortable. This was a discussion about a school in Washington State that had been To Kill a Mockingbird because a black student felt uncomfortable. And also a school or a county in Tennessee. I believe it’s McMahon county. I could be wrong on that. That county banned the graphic novel Mouse for nudity and for profane language in that graphic novel, which depicts a story regarding the Holocaust. And the panelists were disagreeing with the banning for various reasons, contending that school should be a place to make you uncomfortable and push back on your views in order to expose you to someone else’s point of view or to someone else’s experience. And they had rationale that spread the gamut. One panelist wondered if the banning of the books was an attempt to remove literature that addresses topics that make white people look bad. Another panelist linked the idea that the banning of the books is the inevitable consequence of what she called anti-history laws, where parents were pushing back against CRT being taught in the schools. And her line of logic there faulty line of logic was that if you ban CRT from schools, what you’re doing is banning the discussion of race in the school, which leads to the banning of talking about the Holocaust, which will lead to banning the talk of LGBTQ issues. And she said that she felt like it was intentional. And so that’s generally the background. In response to all of this back and forth between the panelists, Whoopi Goldberg said that okay, if we’re going to talk about the Holocaust and bannings and things like that, let’s talk about it for what it really is, because the Holocaust was not about race. And then there was an awkward silence as the women were like, what? What did you just say? She’s like, oh, no, it’s not about race. This is white on white. So they need to go figure out their own thing. When you say race, we’re going down this path, we’re talking about something completely different. But the Holocaust was not about race. And that’s the background of what she was saying. She was saying it within the context of these book bendings, which personally, I am having a hard time understanding and following the logic of any of them on that panel. But Whoopi’s contention was that because the Holocaust was something that was happening to white people, by white people. And this is her definition of white people and of race because the Holocaust was happening between two people of the same race, and it wasn’t about race. And she received a lot of backlash for it justifiably so. And she later on came onto the Stephen Colbert show in order to both apologize and. Well, not quite to apologize. She didn’t apologize. She doubled down, but she tried to further explain what she meant by her statement.

Well, why don’t we play the audio here so folks can hear what he actually said rather than we tried to perfect. So here’s Whoopi introducing the topic, and then you’ll hear Whoopi explain what the Holocaust was about.

Two schools are being accused of banning books after one in Washington state pulled To Kill a Mockingbird off the required reading list after complaints from students and parents, including a former black student who said it made her uncomfortable. And a Tennessee school pulled the graphic novel Mouse out of their lessons on the Holocaust because it contains some nudity and some bad language. Personally, I’m shocked because given the story of Mouse, I’m surprised that’s what made you uncomfortable, the fact that there was some nudity and it’s about the Holocaust, the killing of 6 million people. But that didn’t bother you. I’m not sure that they don’t use the naked part as a kind of a canard to throw you off from the fact that they like history that makes white people look bad. Well, this is why people doing it to white people. Yeah. You all go fight amongst yourselves.

So that was will be kind of introducing the topic to the panel and then explaining what’s going on. And then there was a long discussion between the ladies and stuff like that. And then as Jay said, we’ll be trimming and said this.

Well, also, if you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it, because the Holocaust isn’t about race. But it’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. That’s what it’s about.

So you heard that would be saying that it’s man inhumanity towards another man in terms of what their Naxis did to the Jews. So my question to you, Jay, should she have been suspended for what she said? Of course, later she got suspended for like two weeks from the show and stuff like that. A lot of folks felt like it was a slap in the race. Some people think she should have been removed. Should she have been suspended for what she said. I know she did apologize as well. I don’t have the audio of her apology, but she did apologize, you say. My question for you, Jay. I have any idea what she’s saying, because it’s totally what she said. Makes absolutely no sense. So in short, should she have been suspended or censored for what she said? No, because what she said was completely nonsensical. People say wrong things, erroneous things, even offensive things all the time. The whole idea, the right that we have enshrined in our Constitution called freedom of speech, is that everyone is allowed has the right, I should say, to say what’s on their mind. Of course. Not all speeches, free speech, of course. But there’s no law against being wrong. There’s no law against being offensive. There’s no law against stepping on people’s toes. So on those grounds alone, she should not have been suspended. She should not have been censored. But I would also argue that she wasn’t suspended and she wasn’t censored in light of the fact that there are people in our culture who were genuinely banned and censored and lost their livelihood for less egregious statements. Whoopi is back on The View right now? So she hasn’t really been banned. She was put on a two week or so hiatus of some sort, and she’s back on The View. She’s not really censored. She got nothing more than the requirement to apologize and to explain herself on the Stephen Colbert show. Meanwhile, people have been legitimately, like, completely deplatformed. They can’t even speak out on public. She still has a platform to speak. So she hasn’t been banned. And she hasn’t been censored. So should she have been? Well, I would argue that she wasn’t for something that she said that was completely not only was it nonsensical, it was also contradictory, because if you hear what she said, she said people were offended by the graphic novel Mouse because of nudity and language, but they weren’t offended by the fact that it was about the killing of 6 million Jews. And then in the same breath, she says that the Holocaust wasn’t about race. It was about white on white. And she said, quote, you all go fight amongst yourselves. It makes absolutely no sense. And I go back to answering the question. She wasn’t suspended. She wasn’t censored.

She was suspended for two weeks from the show. That’s called a timeout. There are people who have lost their jobs for saying things that rub people the wrong way. There are people that have been completely deplatformed for saying something that has rubbed the higher ups the wrong way. I think it’s a bit too generous to say that she was censored or that she paid any significant price for what she said because she didn’t maybe her pride took a little bit of a Ding, but compared to what’s happened to many others in terms of cancel culture, she didn’t experience any censorship.

yeah, I agree with you somewhat on that. I generally don’t agree. Or am I in favor of anyone, to be honest, to be censored, be canceled, to be suspended because of something they say? When we start doing that, we kind of go down to this dangerous road of whose peach and whose voice are we going to upset and which one are we going to spend? Of course, we talk about freedom of speech a lot, and folks tend to forget that their First Amendment is the government towards the physician right. So Whoopi work for a private company. And if that private company decide that they want to suspend it for two weeks, well, that’s their prerogative. They can do it if they want to. That has nothing to do, quite honestly, with freedom of speech or anything. To me, that does have to be with the company wanting to not lose some advertisers and not to be Ding in their pocket too heavily. So they give us and say, hey, stay home for two weeks until this kind of blow over. So I’m generally not in favor of people being censored and stuff like that. But if it’s going to be done, I would agree that if it’s going to be done, let it be done by society, meaning you can turn off The View, and if enough people turn it off, they have to go off the air. That’s basically how it works in this country, but not by the government. And of course, I can understand why her employer probably want to do it because you don’t want the backlash to affect your pocket. But at the same time, I think it was a flap on the wrist. But I also speak to Christians because while we may live in the US and we may have the ability to say what we want and stuff like that, the Bible also manages in Colossians four, verse six, that let your speech be always with Grace and season with salt, and that’s difficult to do. It’s difficult to always have your speech with Grace and season with salt and rest of the verse that he may know how he ought to answer every man. That’s important, because as Christians, we need to have our speech in such a way that we’re not deliberately offending and deliberately doing stuff that will put Christ in a bad light. Also, Ephesians four, verse 29, says, Let no communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to use of edifying that he may Minister Grace unto the hearers. So I think those two verses are going to be some guidelines for Christians who want to toot their freedom of speech, because at the same time, you also want to make sure that your speech is with some Grace seasoned with salt.

But the important thing here is that I believe she was censored, not because of what she said per se during The View. I think what she said during The View, and I apologize. That was kind of a blow over at that point. But I think when she went to Colbert and kind of doubled down on it, that’s when they decided that she needs to be suspended. Here’s what would be said the very evening on Colbert.

Now, you made some news this morning. Yes. On The View when you all were talking about the Holocaust. And would you care to follow up, clarify what you said this morning? Does it confuse some people? It upset a lot of people, which was never, ever my intention. I thought we were having a discussion because I feel being black when we talk about race, it’s a very different thing to me. So I said that I felt that the Holocaust wasn’t about race, and people got very angry and still are angry. I’m getting all of the mail from folks, and they’re very real anger because people feel very differently. But I thought it was a salient discussion because as a black person, I think of race as being something that I can see. So I see you and I know what race you are. And the discussion was about how I felt about that. I felt that it was really more about man’s inhumanity to man and how horrible people can be to people. And we’re seeing it manifest itself these days. But people were very angry and they said, no, we are a race. And I understand I felt differently. I respect everything everyone is saying to me, and I don’t want to fake apologize. I’m very upset that people are misunderstood what I was saying. And so because of it, they’re saying that I’m anti Semitic and that I’m denying the Holocaust and all these other things which would never occur to me to do. I thought we were having a discussion about race, which everyone, I think is having.

So that’s what will be said there. And then Colby is going to come in and say some stuff, kind of explain a little bit of history, and then we’ll be going to come back in. So let’s see what Colby said.

As the white guy in the conversation here, I am neither Jewish nor am I black. And so I have a different perspective. All of this. It seems to me that whiteness is a construct created by colonial powers during the beginning of colonial imperialist era in order to exploit other people and that they could apply to all different kinds of people. That idea of race and the American experience tends to be based on skin. Yes. And so that is what race means to me. When you talk about being a racist, I was saying, you can’t call this racism. This was evil. This wasn’t based on the skin. You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. They had to delve deeply to figure it out. Well, I think one of the reasons why that people might say and again, I’m not Jewish and I’m black. But as someone who understands what I’ve read of how the Nazis operated when they found out that you were of the Jewish race. Right. That’s why they make you wear a star so they could see you, so they could identify you. But my point is they had to do the work. If the clan is coming down the street and I’m standing with a Jewish friend and neither one, well, I’m going to run. But if my friend decides not to run, they’ll get passed by most times because you can’t tell who’s Jewish. It’s not something that people say, oh, that person is Jewish or this person is Jewish. And so that’s what I was trying to explain. And I understand that not everybody sees it that way and that I did a lot of harm, I guess, to myself. And people decided I was all these other things I’m actually not. And I’m incredibly torn up by being told these things about myself. And I get it. Folks are angry. I accept that. And I did it to myself.

So our next Colbert is going to chime in again and trying to explain to Whoopi that the Nazis did see the Jews at a different rate, and then Whoopi is going to somewhat disagree with him and hear the rest of the conversation.

This was my thought process, and I will work hard not to think that way again. Have you come to understand that the Nazis saw it as race? In the Nazis, they would say, yes, it’s a racial issue. Well, see, this is what’s interesting to me, because the Nazis lied. It wasn’t they had issues with ethnicity, not with race, because most of the Nazis were white people and most of the people they were attacking were white people. So to me, I’m thinking, how can you say it’s about race if you are fighting each other? So it all really began because I said, how will we explain to children what happened in Nazi Germany? I said, this wasn’t racial. This was about white on white. And everybody said, no, it was racial. And so that’s what this all came from. So once again, don’t write me anymore. I know how you feel, okay? I already know. I get it. And I’m going to take your word for it.

So there you have it. That will be complete statement on the issue should kind of double down there on cold beer. But I will say this. I believe that when people say things that as my wife, Jay, would say, that words have meaning. And I think I understand what Whoopi was trying to say. I understand what she meant. Now, let me make it clear that I do not agree with Whoopi. I do not agree with the conclusion of Whoopi’s world view or the prism in which Whoopi look at things through. But I do understand what we would be was trying to say again. And I don’t even agree with how heavy handed a lot of folks are coming down on Whoopi because again, while I don’t agree with her, I do understand what she’s trying to say because in the US you tend to see race as being binary. It’s either black or the buzzword today is people of color and white. And that not only is it unbiblical view of race, it is a simplistic view of race.

Here’s a quote from Hitler when he referred to the Jews as being a race. Hitler said

“Our racial pride is not aggressive except insofar as the Jewish race is concerned. We used the term Jewish race as a matter of convenience for in reality, and from the genetic point of view, there is no such thing as a Jewish race. There does, however, exist a community to which, in fact, the term can be applied and the existence of which is admitted by the Jews themselves. It is a spiritually homogeneous group to membership of which all Jews throughout the world deliberately are there, regardless of their whereabouts and their country of domicile. And it is this group of human beings to which we give this title Jewish race.”

And that was said by, of course, Hitler, the man who orchestrated the Holocaust. So we see Hitler is talking about a Jewish race. But if you should ask, quote unquote, white people in the US, of course, we personally don’t believe that there’s such thing as white person or black person and stuff like that. But those are the terms we use and I’m going to use those terms. It’s just because you understand what I mean when I say black and white. So if you should go to a white person in the US, they will be able to tell you if they are German, if they are Polish, if they are Scottish, at least some of them would. I’m not sure if all of them would. But you wouldn’t find a white person, so to speak, describing himself as being white, as a white group or white race, you will hear them say something, okay, I’m German or I’m Scottish or English or whatever. But I believe because of slavery and because of what happened to the Africans that were brought to this country, that racial line, so to speak, was erased because most African Americans, again, I’m using that term in quotes cannot tell or chase what country of origin from Africa they were from, but not even that. More importantly, what group of people group within that country they were from. Because of course, in episode 77, we had Leia Paul giving his testimony and Leopold is from Senegal. And of course, in the US he will be considered a black man. But Leopold never in that episode giving his testimony in episode 77 never call himself a black man.

But here’s how Leopold explain is ethnicity in Senegal? “We have like about, I would say about ten ethnic groups. So my ethnic group is called the Sarah, and they are mainly located in the center and in the center of the country, I would say, and a little bit in the coast of Senegal, in the Atlantic Ocean.”

So that was Lepold saying. He’s from Senegal. In Senegal, there are like ten ethnic groups and his group is former thing, he said. Now, I’m pretty sure that if you listen to African people that actually left the continental Africa or from a country in Africa and come to the US, they normally won’t be describing themselves as being Black or whatever case may be. They normally talk about a certain people group that they’re from, pretty much like what Leopold is doing. Actually, there was this one. I think she’s from Kenya and she’s an author, and she was saying that she never saw herself as being African until she came to the US. Are you talking about Chimanda? I think that’s her name. So he did another quote, unquote black young lady saying that she never see herself as being African. And did she come to the US because I think she’s Nigerian, actually. Probably Nigerian, probably Kenyan. I’m quite remember. But the important thing here is that they’re not describing themselves based upon the color of their skin. Right. They’re the people group that they’re from. If you want to even look into this further and just even if you don’t want to dive into encyclopedias and stuff like that, go to YouTube and pull up Family Feud Africa. And here the South Africans, the Gardens and the other areas where Siva went to Africa and did Family Feud and hear how they described themselves. I can’t remember if anyone describing themselves as being black either identity or the racial identity, but they always talk about a certain group that they’re from because that’s their racial identity. So Whoopi has this simplistic view of race? And I can’t really fault whoopee for it because it is what it is in the US. If you ever fill out any official government forms, especially forms from the federal government, and I fill out quite a few because I had to go through the immigration process. During the immigration process, you have identified yourself, you have identified your racial background. And for Blacks, basically, they have black, African American, that’s basically it. That’s your racial background. They have Caucasian, they have Asian Pacific Islander and some other stuff on there. But they don’t have all these different people groups that we have. So what we’re talking about, she’s a victim, to be honest, and probably victim is too strong of a word. But she’s a victim of the culture of the US because in the US we look at he’s black, he’s white, but the person might not even identify himself as the black.

I remember even before I became a citizen of this country, someone referred to me as African American. And I said to her, I am neither African nor am I American, but because of the color of my skin causing a coat. Again, the person determined that my racial identity is African American. So I think, again, she’s just a part of the culture, and she’s just repeating what the culture teaches and what the culture practices. I’m sure there are many black people in the US that think the same way. Like Whoopi? That they are black and they’re white because look at what she said. The example she used was if the KKK was coming down and she was standing there with a Jewish person, a Jewish friend, let’s say Dennis Prager, there’s no way the client can tell the difference that Dennis Prager is a Jew unless he has something else Besides the color of his skin. To tell them that if you were wearing a yarmulker or something. Exactly. But they can look at him and say, oh, he’s white and look at her and she’s black because it’s a binary thing in the US. But the argument I’m making is that it is only in North America where it is such a binary, because if you go to Africa, if you go to Europe, it’s not.

You’re right, MCG, but I think you’re being very maybe too generous to will be on this particular issue, because what you say is true. But it also highlights how self centered and privileged she is, that she could look at a historical event that has affected millions of people across the globe and define it according to her terms. Just because she sees race in a binary fashion and just because here in the US, we tend to see race in a binary fashion, that does not mean that race could be defined that way in Germany at that time, with those particular groups of people, with that sort of thing happening, with the Holocaust happening. The only terms that should define all people everywhere at all times should be whatever is found in the word of God, because God Almighty is the sovereign of the entire universe. He is creator. Everything that he says in his word applies to all people at all times. And so for her to say the Holocaust was not about race and to say so, absolutely and so emphatically demonstrates that she’s expecting or she sees it through her own let me try to explain it this way. The same thing that she was accusing the people who were banning these books in the schools, the same thing that she and her panelists were accusing the people of doing, I. E. Banning books so that they don’t feel the discomfort of having to address ideas that might push back on your ideas a little bit. That might force you to look outside of the box, force you to think outside of yourself for a little bit. She’s doing the same thing. She’s accusing them of what she’s actually doing. Does that make sense? Like she could look at someone else’s experience and say the Holocaust was not about race, because I don’t think that race is binary to make such an arrogant statement. And I don’t know if she realizes how arrogant she’s being. It’s quite possible that she doesn’t realize how dismissive and arrogant and marginalizing she’s being with that statement. But to say that your experience is not what you think it is, because I don’t think that race is what you think it is. That’s where I think it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. She may very well be a victim of the mentality or the culture here in the US, but you and I both know that’s absolutely no excuse, because when, say, for example, missionaries go to another country and they impose their ideas and their ideals and their definitions on the people group that are there, and they refuse to either assimilate or at least to empathize and see the world from their point of view, the people that they’re trying to reach. We see that as an offensive thing. We see that as a negative. She was doing exactly that and then decided to double down on it on the Colbert show anyway. And so I don’t think she realizes how offensive she’s being when she says that because she’s defining their experience by her terms like she’s God or something.

Yeah, I see what you’re saying. And I probably wouldn’t use the term arrogant. Maybe she was being arrogant, but to me, I think maybe if she was being arrogant, her arrogance was because of her ignorance. Okay, fair enough. I think she just didn’t know and probably wasn’t humble enough. What didn’t she know? She just didn’t know that the way she view race is not the same way Hitler viewed race or the same way a lot of other people view race. She probably just didn’t know that. Again, I’m giving her the benefit of a doubt Whoopi is a woman of meanss. So I assume that she travels, and I’m assuming that she probably might have gone to different areas in this world that she can have at least an experience that show that Africans, and I must say, Africans, people from the continent of Africa, from countries in Africa don’t view themselves as black or they’re not all up into their blackness like African Americans are. They more talk about their ethnic groups. Like Leopold was saying, he’s from Senegal, and he just talked about his ethnic group he’s from. Right. And a lot of places around the world talk about the ethnic group they’re from, not the color of their skin. But because here again, as I said, in the US, we have it as a binary factor that you’re either white or black or either people of color or white. This is what she said in Colby. If you use the itest, she looks at the Germans, they’re white. She’s looking at the Jews, they’re white. Then she said, well, it’s an inside battle. Yeah, but does that make it any less egregious? Right. When she says because it’s white on white, as though somehow it’s less egregious than slavery in the United States, that’s also a fault in what she’s saying as well, to minimize someone’s experience. Just because you think that your experience is that much more terrible that’s that victim mentality for her to say just because it’s white or white. That’s why I don’t understand her statement. It makes no sense because she said it wasn’t about race. This is white on white, and it’s about man’s treatment of man, how man treats humanity. If it’s about how men treat men, how men treat one another within the realm of humanity, then slavery is no less egregious than the Holocaust. And the Holocaust is no less egregious than slavery. But the way that she said it presented it as though maybe I’m wrong, I might be putting words in her mouth, but the way that she said it on the view makes it sound as though slavery, as it was experienced by means of the Transatlantic Slave trade, the way that it was experienced here in this nation, that it was more egregious than the Holocaust.

And I agree with you on that. I think that kind of came across. And I did get that feeling that you were saying you were saying that that is not as bad as what my ancestors had to go through. Right. And of course, again, there could be some ignorance there, or maybe as if there’s some arrogance, or maybe she just didn’t think the thought through. I mean, I do that all the time. I don’t think she’s ignorant about this. I don’t know if there’s arrogance there, but it may just very well be that she didn’t think it all the way through. Not that we have a corner. I’m thinking things through. I’m not saying that. Yeah. But the thing is, if Whoopei had a biblical view of race, this would have dispelled all the confusion that will be had here. And again, a biblical view of race. I’m going to talk about that later on. But a biblical view of race would have put this all to the side. Right. But because I guess it’s a sense that when you talk to certain, again, African Americans in the US, they feel like when it comes to racism, and then when it comes to issues of race, that they cannot have the corner of truth because the ancestors went through this and because they have experienced racism, they cannot have a corner of truth. So you can’t tell them what race is. You can tell them what racism is because I’m black. You can’t tell me I know what it is. That was the kind of spirit, I think, Whoopi kind of did it in. But again, a biblical view of race would have dispelled us.

You’re listening to the Removing Barriers podcasts. We’re talking about Whoopi the Holocaust and race. We’ll be right back.

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All right, Jay. So we’ve been using two terms. We have been using race and we’re using ethnicity. Are they the same thing or there’s a broader discussion here. I don’t think they’re the same thing. And I also don’t claim to be an expert on what these social scientists have labeled things. Frankly, I think that social scientists have done us a disservice by these different categorizations. But from what I understand, race is a social identification, a social construct of a group of people that share certain traits. They could be phenotypical traits, like in terms of what they look like. It could be traits in terms of, like, a common language spoken or common culture that they hold a common thread or maybe perhaps even a religious thread that they all hold in unison. But that changes according to what society agrees to at a particular point in time. Whereas ethnicity is a concrete categorization that’s determined according to your tribal group, your language group, where you’re from, like geographically where you’re from. And I could be wrong on that. I don’t claim to have the corner on how social science is defined in groups of people. Yeah, I think that the two terms can be used interchangeably. I did look up the definition in Webster for which one, ethnicity or race. I looked up both of them. And to me, when I read the definition, they seem like they’re the same thing. But personally, I don’t know what the social scientists have said about it. I didn’t look all that up. Oh, yeah, I just pulled it up on Wikipedia. It’s pretty much the same thing. When I think about race and I think about ethnicity, I think ethnicity goes a little bit deeper than just race. And it could be just because of my background and stuff like that.

For instance, I used the example of a lady referring to me as African American before I became a citizen of the country. And I said to the Lady, I’m neither African nor my American, and I wasn’t getting down on her because she referred to me as African American. It was just that it wasn’t my identity, even though I would be considered as being black. I don’t have a shared culture with, quote unquote, African Americans. Now, I have African American friends that I enjoy being around that we can talk and laugh together. But my culture and stuff like that is different. I’m sure there’s some overlap, but it’s different. I’m not saying anything negative. I’m not saying that it’s different. I’m from the Caribbean, and I can guarantee you that people from Jamaica and people from, let’s say, the country of Dominica, they share a lot of things in common, but at the same time, they all share something different. Like the national dish in Jamaica is Akey and starfish. In Dominica, it might be mountain chicken, which is basically frogs. Well, it’s not frogs, sorry, my Dominican friends. But what I’m saying is that even though there’s a lot of similarities, even in the Caribbean, there’s still a lot of differences. Like, sure, a lot of folks can even tell the difference between the Jamaican accent and a lot of other countries in the Caribbean accent. Like, most people think I’m from Jamaica, even though I don’t think I found Jamaica. No. Even when I tell them where I’m from, they still ask me where in Jamaica is that? And I’m like, no, it’s a different country altogether. It’s not in Jamaica. So even in the Caribbean can argue that with the same race or you can even argue with the same ethnicity. There are some differences in culture. So I think ethnicity kind of boil it down to a certain geographic location where you can say you and this person kind of have things in common, because even what Jamaicans call partwar and we call dialect, they have many, many different words that Jamaica would use that we won’t use and stuff like that. And I’m sure that’s true, even for in Europe, they’re Englishman and the Scottish and Irish, I’m sure they probably have a lot in common, but I’m sure they also have a lot differently that they do that is so uniquely Irish or uniquely Scottish or uniquely English or uniquely German that some of other folks might have. I think at times, again, we want to go to this binary stuff called race. I don’t know. But to me, there might be the same thing. But when I think about ethnicity, I think about going a little bit deeper, just beyond race. But again, when I look at the definitions, official definitions, I see that they look like they’re the same thing. Maybe the best way to conceptualize this, perhaps it may be conceptualizes too strong a word, but perhaps we could think of it as ethnicity, as races tied to nations. When I think of the word ethnicity, I think of Nations, I think of tribes. I think of a particular group of people. And, well, when you think of the people groups that span Eastern Europe, that becomes even more pronounced because people have their ethnicities, even though the political boundaries of the country have shifted throughout the years, but they still have their distinct ethnic flavor, for lack of a better word.

And perhaps we should address these issues on that particular front, because, you know, a good example would be the Native Americans. Because Native Americans. Because a lot of folks like you and me and many folks that are not Native Americans, you can’t look at the Native American and know what child they’re from. I’m sure the Native Americans probably can. Oh, for sure. And they’re living on the same land mass. They’re distinct, but they still distinct from each other. Exactly. Just like I can tell someone from the Caribbean just by how they talk. Right. I can tell what country they’re from just by, quote, unquote, the accent. And many people can’t, unless you’re from that area. And I’m sure the same is true. The same is true in the US, because you can tell when someone is Southern or from New York or from Boston or even amongst so called black people. Right. Because even though I was born and raised here, I find it very difficult to identify as African American because I was not raised with the same culture. The culture was completely different. My parents were from the Caribbean. And so even though they immigrated here and set roots here, I can’t identify myself with the African American culture. But if anyone looking at me would say, oh, she’s African American. But if I go back to my hometown, I can tell who is from my same ethnicity, from my same culture. It’s probably the same thing when we think about it in those particular terms. And maybe if we did think about things in those terms, then we would interact with each other with a little bit more Grace understanding. Because now it’s not just about something superficial like skin color. This is about culture. It’s about families and tribes and culture and the underrouting and the underpinning of what makes us who we are. And perhaps it could be more empathetic when we’re talking to one another and not assume that all of our particular prisms would define someone else’s prism, kind of like Whoopi did in this particular issue.

Now, I know I’m coming down a little hard on Whoopi right now, but does the remarks she made make her racist or anti Semitic in your opinion? Well, honestly, I do not think that it made her racist or antisemitic or anything of that nature. I think Woody was just more ignorant in what she said, but I don’t think so. I think she was expressing the way she feels about it, what she thinks. But I wouldn’t go as far as that she was racist. I don’t think she has anything against Jews or anything of that sort. I think she was just expressing an opinion that she has based upon her experience and her view of race. I guess I would agree with that. People can say racist things without being personally racist. I believe that I know everything what she said was necessary racist. No, I just mean that in general. So in the same way that someone can say something racist and not be personally racist. Someone can say something that we would agree is antisemitic but not be personally antisemitic. What she said, I would definitely categorize it as antisemitic because her statement, if you quote it verbatim, she said let’s talk about the truth about this is what she said, as if implying that the current narrative or the current idea about the Holocaust is a lie. She said the truth about it is it’s not about race, it’s white on my crime. In other words, this is another aspect of the arrogance of what she said. The truth is what she sees that races and not actually what it was when the Holocaust was being carried out. So what she said was anti Semitic. But I don’t think she is personally anti Semitic, although I could be wrong about that. That kind of what we see in the culture today is about your truth and not the truth, right? Oh, that’s a very concise way of putting it. She was all about her truth but not about the objective. The truth. Right.

But the question begs to this probably can be his own podcast topic, but can black people? And again, when we say black people, we’re talking about black people in the US be racist? Yes, absolutely. They can. They have a nice word for it, though. Not a nice word, but they have a different word for it. They call it colorism. They call it bias, perhaps defined colorism for those who are listening that may not know that term. Well, from what I understand, colorism is it’s when black people are racist against black people, it’s racism against anyone that is not white or preference or prejudice or discrimination based on anything Besides the fact that the person is white. That’s what it means. Goes to the lightest skin black folks versus the darker skin versus the darker skin browsing. It’s more of an inner fight if that’s the right word to use. Where I hear it mostly discussed is actually in sports, really. I follow the NBA basketball. I used to follow it a lot closer than I do now. Think about folks like Blake Griffin or Steph Curry, where they are a little bit on the lighter side. Most of the time it’s because they have a black father and white mother or vice versa. Or think about lament a ball or Lance a ball to those folks that are in the NBA. But they consider being black because they have a much like a skin color coat that’s in the black community. A lot of times they will think the lighter your skin, the more beautiful you are kind of thing. So they’re discriminated against the darker black folks and stuff like that. Doesn’t that stem from the same idea that Woop is talking about that talking about race, it’s automatically about white versus black. And so if you’re talking about colorism, it can’t possibly be the same thing, doesn’t it stem from that? Same could be idea. Again, they don’t call it racism. They call it colorism. But to me, if you define race and define colorism, to me, they’re the same thing. Sure. You’re judging someone or saying someone is at a certain way or discriminating against that person because and only because of the color of their skin or even preferring someone or treating someone preferentially because of their color as well.

Yeah. In the island we refer to as the complexion. Of course, even in the island you see this, you will say, okay, this person has a lighter complexion or whatever the case may be. And you could see even some folks don’t believe they’re pretty because the skin is darker than someone else or whatever the case may be. Also, it has to do sometimes with here texture, especially among women. The black one with a closer here compared to the black woman with a little bit straighter here. We’ll consider that one here to be good and one here to be bad. Concept of good hair. Right. And stuff like that. So it goes a little bit deeper when you talk about colorism, but you see that in the black community, and to me, that is the same thing as racism. You’re discriminating against a person not based on the context of their character, but based on simply the color of their skin. And I think Whoopi would understand that? I think that’s where she was coming from when she said that. And even if she wanted to say the Jews and the Germans were the same race, which of course, is not true because we know race is not binary, black and white and stuff like that. Sure. I’m sure she understands colorism. So the thing is here is more importantly than even colourism and race ethnicity and all these things.

I think it behooves us to end somewhat with a biblical view of race, or at least what the Bible teaches about race. I’m interested to hear what you say, because when I think of what the Bible says about race on quotes, the Bible doesn’t address it the way that we think of it. The Bible addresses nations, tongues, tribes, but it doesn’t say anything about what we would think about race is. So what’s the biblical view on race? Yeah. Bible never use the term race to mean anything what we mean today on race. So that’s interesting.

Of course, you’re right. The Bible talk about nations, tongues, tribes and stuff like that. But he never mentioned the term race in terms of the way we use it today. But the interesting, though, that I think where this may have begun is back with Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin in this book, The Defend of man, said that they are higher and lower. Reese. He went on to say that the Caucasians are the higher race. So I personally believe that racism and the race division is caused by two things, evolution and the sinful nature of man. Of course maybe you can say caused by wanting the sinful nature of man because out of that becomes evolution. And what Darwin said in The Descent of man for many, many years. And if you go back to some older science textbooks, they actually taught that in science. Even listen to some of Martin Luther King’s speeches where he was saying that the rationale was that all men are created equal. But we know the black man is not a man so he wasn’t created equally. So the rationale was that if the Batman is not the man then he wasn’t created equally like the white man or whatever case may be quoted unquote. So I think his evolutionary teacher of man that led to all of these things in science. And of course we know the sinful nature of man. The Bible teaches us that we are all descending from one man and one woman. Adam and Eve. These two humans had a genetics to produce all people groups or races we see today. The Bible further teaches us that Adam and sin and because of this sins we are all born sinners. Of course Romans five or twelve, which was by one man sin enter to the world and death by sin. And so they pass upon all men for that all have sin echoes. Seven, verse 20 said for there is not a just man upon the Earth that do it good and sin it not. So we see here that we have the evolution of teaching and even some false teaching in scriptures as well that I think that is to blame on this because many times they teach that God curse harm.

And I remember when I was in College, I challenged one of my teacher on this teaching because he was teaching that you say, okay, God curse Ham. The Bible never said that God cursed Ham. The Bible says God curse can’t because if you go back further, I think it was Genesis seven or Genesis eight. The Bible talk about that God bless Noor and his son. So if God bless him nor could turn around and decide to go to curse Ham so curse Canan. If you follow the line of the Canaanites through the scripture, the Bible commanded that they should be destroyed. So a lot of times people say okay black people are the descendants of him. I actually don’t believe that anymore. I was taught that Shem, Ham, Japheth all produced the different people groups in scripture but I don’t believe that anymore. I could be wrong. If someone is more verse in this, I can show me from scripture how she produced all the different people groups. I’m willing to look at it. But where I believe the people groups come from in scripture goes back to Genesis, Genesis eleven where the Bible teaches that of course we know Adam disobeyed God and because of that sin the human race was plunged into sin. The Bible teaches us that God saw the weakness of man, was great upon Earth and imagination of his thoughts were either continually. That was Genesis six five. Because of the wickedness, God sent a worldwide flood. And that is very important to note. God sent a worldwide flood to destroy all humans except Nor and his wife and his three sons and their wife after the flood. Because all men speak one language and live together with their sinful nature. They wanted to be like God. They built a tower called the tower of Bible. This is when God in Genesis eleven decided to confound the language. And because of God confounded the language, this caused a scattering of the people abroad. And I believe because of this scattering it create an isolation of gene pool. And this is what created people groups or what today we sometimes refer to as race. That’s where I believe the different people groups or race comes from, not from produced black people. Japheth and Shem produced white and Middle Eastern people kind of thing. I don’t believe that. I believe if we look at what happened when God confounded the languages in Genesis eleven and verse seven and the people scattering abroad, I believe that’s what created the isolation of gene pool. Because each family now only can communicate with each other. They spread abroad as God wanted them to do in the first place. The gene pool was isolated because of course we know in Genesis it was against God’s law to marry your cousin or your sister or stuff like that. So they created isolation of gene pool and then you created what we call people groups.

And it’s important here that this is not even just the Bible saying this, even though the Bible saying it is enough for me that we are all one race, the human race. But because of the isolation of gene pool, we have these paper groups. But you can even look at the Human Genome Project. The Human Genome Project concluded in this study of the sequencing of the human genome that we are all of one race, the human race. And a Brown pigment in our skin, melanin doesn’t make anyone white or black. But simply based on how much you have will determine what shade of Brown you are. Melanin is a Brown pigment in your skin, how much you have basically determine how whether someone comes in black or white or anything in between. So basically there’s only one race and basically all human lives matter regardless of what people group you may be a part of.

The Bible teaches us that not only we all from one man Adam who sin and caused sin and death on all, but that the second Adam which is very important here. The second Adam, which is Jesus Christ, can give life to all one. Corinthians 15:21 and 22 says, for since by man came dead, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For if Adam all died, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. It is important here to note again that when God talk about the first man, he always goes back to Adam. And what Adam did that plunge us into sin. And because we all have sinner, because of the sinful nature of man, and because of the evolutionary teaching of science, we might have this false view of race. But the Bible teaches us that the families were scattered when God confronted the language again, created isolation of gene pool, but that sinful nature was in all of us because we have all one ancestor, which is Adam and Eve, but also we can have one ancestor in the second Adam, which is Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches us in Isaiah 59, verse two but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his faith from you that he will not hear you, my friends, because of that sinful nature. Because of your sin, there’s a separation between your God. The only way you can be reconciled to God is through His Son, Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches us in verse 22, verse five six, for there is one God and one mediator between God and men. The man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. His debt, burial, and a resurrection secure all payment for all forgiveness of sins. Of course, we know John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. I strongly believe if we want to solve this racial issue that’s going on in this country, it’s only going to be true a reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ, then we can look at each other as brothers and sisters rather than the color of our skin because we are all one creation, but we all also can be reconciled through Jesus Christ by repenting faith in Him.

I strongly believe that this teaching and this division is a teaching from the devil himself that is putting this division among us, that we’re looking at the color of our skin and judging each other and stuff like that, when quite honestly, we are all God’s creation. We’re not all these children, but we’re all his creation, but we all can be children through repentance faith in Jesus Christ. Of course, the Bible says in one John One and verse nine, if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sin and declines us from all unrighteousness. If we place our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and trust Him alone for our Salvation and reconciliation with God, we can be saved. Romans Ten, verse 13 for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And I like the word whosoever because it doesn’t signify any people, group or any race or any ethnic group. He said whatsoever and that includes you, my friend. If you call upon the name of the Lord, you can be saved and we all can move along as brothers and sisters in Christ rather than white black people of color. All this nonsense that we have been taught and somewhat adhere to at times. So my encouragement to you is to trust the Lord Jesus Christ for your Salvation. If you have never done so, would you trust him today?

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