Whoopi

 

Rocky Racoon

Her name was Magill and she called herself Lil
And everyone knew her as Nancy

What something is, not what you call it, is what is important.

On the Monday January 31, 2020 edition of the ABC show the View, Whoopi Goldberg ignited controversy when she characterized the Nazi Holocaust as “white on white violence” and characterized the banning of the Book Maus as not racism.  Technically she is correct, but I think that she would agree that both the Holocaust and lynching were genocide. Both are also casteism at its worst, even if one is religious casteism and the other is racial casteism.

Isabel Wilkerson in her book Caste, noted that the Nazis copied many of their laws from the Jim Crow South. Laws to discriminate on the basis of race are not very different than laws to discriminate on the basis of religion.  Classifying one as racist and one as religious discrimination is not as useful as calling both casteism.  Casteism includes all forms of discrimination: on race, sex, religion, gender orientation, language, nationality, immigration status, etc.  Caste is the ancient Hindu System of classes where the various Castes (classes) each shared the same race, the same nationality, the same religion, the same language, etc.  Caste was based only on the occupation of one’s parents, Caste is hereditary, and there is an inability to move between castes.

Discrimination is the issue, not on the basis for the discrimination.  Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg) and Joe (Hymie) Simon created Captain America who battled Nazism in the comics.  Jerry Siegel (Jerome Segalovich) and Joe Shuster, all children of Jewish immigrants, created Superman who battled both Nazism and the Ku Klux Klan.  Discrimination, as in Casteism, is not only against Truth and Justice but most importantly against the American Way.  The controversy should be discrimination, not what we call it.  A rose by any name would smell as sweet.  Garbage by any name would smell as rotten.