"The View" host, comedian and actress Whoopi Goldberg at a November event in New York City. Photo: Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
ABC News has suspended "The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks after she said on air that the Holocaust was "not about race," the network confirmed on Tuesday night.
Driving the news: Goldberg, who's been with the show since 2007, will be suspended immediately according to a memo from ABC News president Kim Godwin.
- "While Whoopi has apologized, I've asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments," Godwin added.
- "The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities."
Context: Goldberg made the comments during Monday's episode as the hosts discussed a Tennessee school district's decision to ban "Maus," a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel that depicts the horrors of the Holocaust.
- "Well, this is white people doing it to white people, so y'all gonna fight amongst yourselves," Goldberg said.
- She added that the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 6 million Jews and millions of others, was about "man's inhumanity to man" and said it involved "two white groups of people."
- "If you're going to do this, then let's be truthful about it because the Holocaust isn't about race," Goldberg said.
What she's saying: Goldberg said in her apology that she should have said it was both about race and man's inhumanity to man.
- "As Jonathan Greenblatt from the anti-Defamation League shared, 'The Holocaust was about the Nazi's systemic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race.' ... I'm sorry for the hurt I have caused," she wrote.
- Goldberg could not immediately be reached for comment on her suspension.