The actress and longtime host shared a message with viewers apologizing for her words.
Whoopi Goldberg is issuing an apology for unknowingly using an offensive term during a recent conversation on an episode of The View.
"You know, when you’re a certain age, you use words that are from, you know, when you’re a kid or you remember saying," Goldberg shared in the message to viewers, shared on The View's Twitter account. "And that’s what I did today, and I shouldn’t have."
While discussing Donald Trump's loss in the 2020 election, Goldberg offhandedly said of Trump supporters that some were "people who still believe that he got, you know, gypped somehow in the election."
The term is considered a racist and derogatory slur toward people of Romani heritage and culture, and is derived from the word "gypsy."
In her apology, Goldberg said of her word choice, "I should have thought about it a little longer before I said it, but I didn't. I should have said 'cheated,' and I used another word, and I’m really, really sorry,"
This apology comes after Goldberg drew heat on two separate occasions last year for her remarks on the Holocaust. Goldberg first came under fire for her opinions in February, when speaking on The View. "The Holocaust isn't about race. It's about man's inhumanity to man," she said at the time. "These are two white groups of people."
Her comments caused her to be suspended from the talk show for two weeks. Prior to the suspension, however, Goldberg offered an apology to viewers. "Yesterday on our show, I misspoke," she said. "[The Holocaust] is indeed about race," she continued, "because Hitler and the Nazis considered the Jews to be an inferior race. Now, words matter, and mine are no exception. I regret my comments and I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people, as they know and y'all know, because I've always done that."
Then in December, Goldberg drew heat when she tried to address and clarify her controversial remarks during an interview with The Sunday Times but instead made comments that many saw as doubling down on her original remarks.
Goldberg told the Times that the Holocaust "wasn't originally" about race. "Remember who they were killing first," she said. "They were not killing racial; they were killing physical. They were killing people they considered to be mentally defective. And then they made this decision."
As a response, the Times reporter told Goldberg that "the Nazis measured the heads and noses of Jews to 'prove' they were a distinct race." Goldberg said, "They did that to Black people too. But it doesn’t change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on a street. You could find me. You couldn’t find them."
After the interview caused more backlash, Goldberg issued a statement to ET, saying, "Recently while doing press in London, I was asked about my comments from earlier this year. I tried to convey to the reporter what I had said and why, and attempted to recount that time. It was never my intention to appear as if I was doubling down on hurtful comments."
Goldberg added that since February, she has talked with "people like rabbis and old and new friends." She stressed, "In this time of rising antisemitism, I want to be very clear when I say that I always stood with the Jewish people and always will. My support for them has not wavered and never will."
Notably, the Nazis also targeted the Romani people, killing hundreds of thousands during the holocaust, in a concentrated attempt at ethnic cleansing.
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