So you didn’t say that:
Whoopi Goldberg is not an expert.
Which is what I was replying to? Or are you saying that you meant something else other than she’s not an expert?
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Generally the places our ancestors were from in time are gone. They are not reality anymore and our experience of them is partially fantasy whether we admit it or not. This is always the problem I have when these kind of autochthonous land associations seem to crop up. It’s as if we all can trace a family back from ourselves to where all of our ancestors came from, and identify only one single physical land where one single “culture of origin” was dominant. Meanwhile genetic testing and the sheer amount of data we have on people now has long shown that for most families “ethnic” identities vs reality is complex and ambiguous, even moreso the further one goes back. People don’t remember wars and migrations from 600 or 1500 years ago all that well even. People often don’t know who all of their ancestors even were. Further back, even less. People don’t always tell the truth to their descendants and the truth is always hard to arrive at anyway when the question is something like “who/what are our people,” and even more complex when one remembers that a group of people may not ever be in a position to tell their own story or answer that for themselves within a larger culture around them. People’s ideas, and social values, their family structures, the identity of the living and the cultural artifacts they’ve carried with them from the past, those do have value and meaning. And they try to pass that on because it’s human nature to do so. But that value isn’t necessarily connected to a precise single piece of the physical Earth where all preceding generations lived backwards into some kind of infinity, which is how it sort of ends up sounding when people talk about land that way.
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Those of us with ancestors from all over the place, do we have an ethnicity? Are we just supposed to pick one? Does society pick one for us?
In America it’s so much simpler to just rank people by skin tone and say we’re done 
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It’s text on the internet. People are going to perceive your comments differently than you may have intended. The remedy is to clarify your remarks, not burden others with the effort of reading your mind.
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I think all of the above. My recent experience is that I am a Californian — because I prefer the association and white folks I’ve been meeting from Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Louisiana, and Maine have called me that.
However when folks find out I was born Jewish, then I’m a Jew from California.
I am also an Angeleno. I spent 20 years in NorCal and it made me cold. Also having a mixed race family seems to get people to assume we are from California.
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A Californian?
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or just let it go
Just letting it go, when we believe someone has misunderstood us, is often a good choice
The alternative may involve standing in a hole arguing about whose shovel is in our hands
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Ain’t nothing wrong in my book with identifying as just another mutt. Or maybe what I mean is, with admitting that like maybe all of us, that’s what you are.
Seems to me that’s more true to who we are than lumping ourselves into a fantasized and loose grouping that’s only true about some small part of ourselves.
Which is not to say of course that no one should value what they and a group they’re in see as their ethnicity, nor that such valuings don’t sometimes arise for a lot of very good reasons.
Maybe on the Internet, EVERYONE is a dog!
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This was bound to happen. It is odd that the media is focusing on the “not about race part” rather than the “just white people killing white people; y’all go fight amongst yourselves” part, but either way, there have to be consequences for that kind of thing.
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We wish; in general, doggos tend to be much better ‘people’ than humans…
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Yeah, I caught that too, and while she was wrong on the “it wasn’t about race” part , that part felt weird, like, “Oh, the holocaust doesn’t matter to black people because it was just whites doing it to whites.” This is excluding the fact that, no, even if we use the definition of race as skin tone, the Germans were also rounding up non-whites JUST because of skin tone. So it’s a very weird statement to say the least.
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I almost wondered if that was a misquote. Maybe she actually said (or meant to say), “y’all were fighting amongst yourselves.” That would have made her statement still objectionable but not so much beyond the pale.
ETA: I am not suggesting that she did say anything other than what was quoted. I was just referring to what popped into my head when I first glanced the statement.
That feels like an overreaction to me. What she said was both wrong and antisemitic and stupid, but I don’t think Whoopi is a bigot, her apology was less squirrelly than most, and – speaking as a Jew – what she said didn’t harm me. I’m more worried about the many myths about us that seem common in some communities (and across the political spectrum), mainly suggestions that we have undue power (over weather, benjamins, media, legislators).
If the network really thinks her stupidity means she should be punished, they should sack her. 2 weeks is just performative.
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I think that sacking her would be an overreaction. Two weeks seems just about right.
I also don’t think that her remarks were anti-Semitic, but they were quite ignorant and flippant on the matter of the Holocaust.
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I kind of feel like they’re punishing her for the the holocaust is a white person’s problem, not that it wasn’t about race. Given who the View currently has on it, it’s hardly the dumbest or most offensive thing that has been said. Meghan McCain had thrown out some real hateful whoppers and hadn’t so much has gotten a slap on the wrist.
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Maybe. Being caught saying stupid shit on TV, and being universally called out for it, is already pretty good punishment for something like this. Giving her 2 weeks unpaid vacation lets her duck out of sight until things die down.
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Yeah, ultimately, this is less of a punishment and more of a PR move to let the air clear.
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I also wonder if a white person had said the same things if they’d face ‘consequences’ from the network such as Whoopi. From the Megan McCain example, it seems not.
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That’s also a good point. Megan McCain was much worse and got away with a lot more.
I hope that this sets a precedent that will be impossible not to apply to other ABC talk show hosts regardless of who they are.
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Interesting fact;
There are no white people in the Bible.
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