A HuffPost UK story about the Holocaust made the rounds on social media Wednesday as an unsettling correction made readers do double takes.
Since when does the figure six million on the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust need scare quotes?
Apparently Sophia Eribo, who wrote the piece and self-describes as “not your typical angry black female,” felt they were important. When all hell broke loose, her editors later disagreed.
In Eribo’s largely insensitive story, she talks about how great it is that Jan. 27 commemorates the day for living survivors of the Holocaust. In her next breath, she asks, BUT WHAT ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE AND VICTIMS OF SLAVERY?
Was this where she used scare quotes?
“Unlike the six million figure that so often goes with statistic about the number of Jews killed during the Second World War, it’s not so easy to quantify when it comes to black slaves. It’s estimated that as many as 2.4 million black Americans died just in the crossing from Africa to the Americas.”
She goes on to talk about recent terrorist attacks and the 5,000 Jews that emigrated from Paris to Israel in the last year. She quickly changes the subject to black struggles in Africa.
“What about the 60,000 illegal immigrants from Africa that paid thousands of euros they don’t have to huddle onto overcrowded boats last year, praying to reach Europe? And when tragedies like Lampedusa happen, killing more than 350 people… Not all the desperate people fleeing to Europe are black Africans, but a significant portion of them are.”
Oh, but let’s not stop there. Let’s move on to how powerful the Jewish lobby is in America. Is she f–king kidding us? Did Arianna Huffington seriously not oversee this? Was she napping in one of her famous sleeping rooms?
The following day Eribo wrote a lame non-apology apology saying she never intended to include so many perceived anti-Semitic turns of phrase.
“For any unintended offence caused, I am truly sorry,” she wrote in UK spellings if you’re wondering why her essay appears to be sprinkled with spelling errors. “But I’m not sorry about bringing the larger topic out into the open. With ‘black issues’, sometimes the only thing uniting us as a people is the colour of our skin.”
She tried to apologize again. And again, fell on her face.
“I should have taken more care not to in any way denigrate the spirit of January 27th and all it stands for.” Just a few sentences later: “But the world does need to care about black historical suffering.”
Best part of all — she concludes her original story by saying her best friends is Israeli. No, really. Some of her best friends are Jews.
“I run the risk of being labelled an anti-semite, but I’m not,” she wrote. “I’ll trot out that well-worn defence against every sort of “ism”, but it’s true – my best friend is a half-Israeli, secular Jew.”
Let’s hope that Jewish “friend” didn’t read her story.