Whoopi Goldberg has apologized for using a word considered an ethnic slur on Wednesday’s episode of ABC’s “The View.”
During a conversation on the broadcast discussing former President Donald Trump, Goldberg remarked that some of his supporters believe “he got ‘gy—-d’ somehow in the election” — a term for cheating that perpetuates a negative stereotype about the Romani 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 from when you were a kid or you remember saying, and that’s what I did today, and I shouldn’t have,” said Goldberg at the start of the video, which was posted to the show’s official Twitter account.
“I should’ve thought about it a little longer before I said it, but I didn’t,” the actress added. “And I should’ve said cheated, but I used another word, and I’m really, really sorry.”
This is not the first time Goldberg has come under fire for espousing controversial viewpoints or using outdated and offensive language on air. Early last year, she was suspended from “The View” for two weeks after she argued that the Holocaust — in which six million Jewish people were murdered — was “not about race.”
Goldberg brought it up again in December in an interview with the Sunday Times of London, saying that the Holocaust was not “originally about race” — a comment she later apologized for, but which did not result in any disciplinary action.
The head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, called her comments “deeply offensive and incredibly ignorant,” and the Auschwitz Memorial posted excerpts of a 1919 letter written by Adolf Hitler where he explicitly referred to his view of the Jewish people as an “alien race.”
Goldberg’s apology for Wednesday’s remarks elicited a variety of responses on social media.
“Well, I learned something today! Thanks for this teaching moment. I won’t say this in the future!” wrote one user, while another said, “[People] use that word all the time.. How is that offensive?”
Other users acknowledged the word’s harm, but still defended Goldberg, with one user writing, “She’s said lots 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 to offend the Roma people. Now that we know, we can stop using it, but I’ll give her a pass.”
