Whoopi Goldberg has apologized for using a word considered an ethnic slur on Wednesday’s episode of ABC’s “The View.”
During a chat on the show discussing former President Donald Trump, Goldberg remarked that some of his followers think “he got himself ‘gy—-d’ somehow. another in the election” – a term for cheating that perpetuates a negative stereotype about Roma people.
Goldberg said she was sorry in a video posted after the show.
“You know, when you’re a certain age, you use the words that you know when you were a kid or that you remember saying, and that’s what I did today, and I wouldn’t have had to,” Goldberg said at the start. of the video, which was posted on the show’s official Twitter account.
“I should have thought about it a little longer before saying it, but I didn’t,” the actress added. “And I should have said cheated, but I used another word, and I’m really, really sorry.”
This isn’t the first time Goldberg has come under fire for espousing controversial viewpoints or using outdated and offensive language on-air. At the beginning of last year, she was suspended from “The View” for two weeks after arguing that the Holocaust – in which six million Jews were murdered – was “not about race”.
Goldberg I did it again in December in an interview with the Sunday Times of London, saying the Holocaust was “not originally about race” – a comment for which she later apologized, but which did not result in any disciplinary action .
Anti-Defamation League leader Jonathan Greenblatt called his “deeply offensive and incredibly ignorant” comments and the Auschwitz Memorial job excerpts from a 1919 letter written by Adolf Hitler where he made explicit reference to his view of the Jewish people as an “alien race”.
Excerpt from Adolf Hitler’s letter on “the dangers now presented by the Jewish community to our nation” of September 16, 1919.
This text is one of Hitler’s first major statements about the Jewish question. pic.twitter.com/t56oHRWm2w
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) December 26, 2022
Goldberg’s apology for Wednesday’s remarks drew various responses on social media.
“Well, I learned something today! Thank you for this teaching moment. I won’t say that again in the future!” wrote one user, while another said: “[People] use this word all the time. How offensive is that?”
Other users acknowledged the evil of the word, but still defended Goldberg, with one user writing, “She said a lot of horrible things, but I have to defend her here. Most people don’t know the etymology of the word … and almost no one who uses it means offending Roma. Now that we know, we can stop using it, but I’ll give it a pass.