Whoopi Goldberg returned to The View today (14 February) after her two-week suspension.
The Sister Act star was suspended from the US talk show last month after saying the Holocaust “isn’t about race”.
Goldberg, who has since issued two apologies, had said on the 31 January episode of the ABC series: “The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. That’s the problem.”
The entertainment star was widely criticised for her comments, which were branded “ignorant” and “dangerous”.
Greeting viewers in her first show back on Valentine’s Day, Goldberg said: “Welcome to The View and yes, I am back.”
She continued: “I missed you all. There’s something kind of marvellous about being on a show like this… Sometimes we don’t do it as elegantly as we could… but it’s five minutes to get in important information about topics. That’s why what we try to do every day… I want to thank everybody who reached out while I was away…”
Goldberg added: “We’re going to keep having tough conversations, in part because that’s what we’ve been hired to do. It’s not always pretty. It’s not always as other people would like to hear.
“But it’s an honour to sit at this table and be able to have these conversations because they’re important to us as a nation and as a human entity.”
She concluded by saying: “Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all.”
Following Goldberg’s suspension, comedian and writer David Baddiel was praised for his “eloquent” breakdown of her comments on Good Morning Britain.
He said: “The problem with it is there are so many issues – and I’m a fan of Whoopi Goldberg’s – but there are so many issues with what she said. It does reveal an awful lot about the confusions people have around antisemitism.
“One of the principle things going on here is the resistance to the idea that antisemitisim is racism. What does Whoopi Goldberg think it is? What a lot of people think it is is religious intolerance.”
He continued by saying that “the Nazis were not interested in faith; they were interested in racial purity”.
