The Anti-Defamation League has revised the definition of racism following the controversy sparked by Whoopi Goldberg’s comments on the Holocaust.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO, announced the change in a published essay this week, admitting the organization’s definition had been incomplete, “ineffective and therefore unacceptable.”
“In all honesty, as I re-read it this past week, it struck me that it didn’t even speak to my own family’s experience with the racism they experienced as Jews from the Middle East,” Greenblatt wrote.
The ADL previously described racism as “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges White people.”
That definition, which was used since 2020, Greenblatt said, was revised to include systemic racism and the impact of White supremacy on people of color, the New York Post reported.
But Greenblatt admitted that the definition was “so narrow” because the group and its founders felt no one should be “persecuted, demeaned or discriminated against because of their identity,” which also encompasses faith, race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, and more.
The group’s new and “interim” definition now states that racism “occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity.”
Greenblatt also said the league would continue to evaluate how it defined racism as well as other words and phrases on its website.
This is the second time the group has changed the definition of racism over the past five years.
The change came after some people voiced their concern over the ADL’s previous definition of racism. Greenblatt condemned the remarks made on the talk show “The View” by host Goldberg earlier this week, in which she falsely declared that the Holocaust was “not about race.”
“There’s no question that the Holocaust was about race. That’s how the Nazis saw it as they perpetrated the systematic annihilation of the Jewish people across continents, across countries, with deliberate and ruthless cruelty,” he said during an interview Tuesday on “The View.”
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