Making Whoopi

Well, there has been plenty of ink spilled and gigabytes expended (through electronic means) over the bizarrely uninformed comments Whoopi Goldberg made on TheView (like this was the first time she ever made a bizarrely uninformed comment on The View, a show I NEVER watch and skewered in one of my novels. I have no idea what the purpose of that show is. But Whoopi stuck her foot in it. 

She took the name Whoopi Goldberg as a stage name because she farted like a Whoopie cushion and her mother thought Goldberg would make her stand out. Although not all people named Goldberg are Jewish (I could name a couple I know of), it is seen as a standard Jewish name. She defended it over the years saying she had Jewish background, but there is no proof of that. 

This seems to be committing the sin of cultural appropriation, to me. It also seems like a lie. 

If this leads to a better discussion of what race is (and I realize to a large extent race is a construct or at best misunderstood), good. I doubt it. 

"Race as a construct" means that to some extent it is based on made up categories. The Bible talks of people groups, but not races--you won't find it. Yes, Black people come from Africa, but not all Africans are Black. There are "black" people in indigenous Australian and Indonesian tribes--or they look "black." in skin color and facial features and hair type. But I don't know if they would be considered "black" because these are not set, scientific categories. "White" used to mean mostly Protestant Northern European only, and the Eastern and Southern Europeans (Poles, Italians) or those of Catholic background (Irish) were not considered "white" in the 19th century. That makes no sense to us today. Race can't be determined by skin color alone, despite what Whoopie thinks. If race exists, it's more than that. 

"Race" was used by powerful groups to marginalize and oppress others who were supposedly of a different "race," (not of the human race, perhaps?). It is a word that causes problems. 

The bigger question for me is why certain people have platforms despite their ignorance.