Tip to Whoopie Goldberg, ABC and Jews

 NBC -  Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended from ABC's "The View" for two weeks after she came under fire for saying 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 Goodwin said Tuesday in a statement. "While Whoopi has apologized, I've asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities."

But a 2019 statement by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists declares:

“Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination”…

Progressive Review, November 2021

Your editor has argued from time to time that we should view differences in what people define as biological race as actually cultural in roots and use the term ethnic instead. While professing to be exposing discrimination, for example, the media reinforces the false science of race and contributes to our false definition of our cultural differences.  Here is a good summary of the science behind this matter from Wikipedia

Wikipedia – A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term was first used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations. By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical traits. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning.

Social conceptions and groupings of races have varied over time, often involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Today, scientists consider such biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits….

Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created, often by socially dominant groups, to establish meaning in a social context. Different cultures define different racial groups, often focused on the largest groups of social relevance, and these definitions can change over time.

In short, instead of genes and DNA, think culture. After all Donald Trump, Pope Francis and the Beatles all have white skin... and how much does that tell you?.