The recent controversy over Whoopi Goldberg’s remarks on ABC’s “The View” that the Holocaust wasn’t driven by racism since it involved “two white groups,” her subsequent apology, and her two-week suspension raised many thorny issues: our understanding of racism and antisemitism, historical ignorance, “cancel culture” and forgiveness for missteps. But one lesser-known aspect of this story is that it prompted the Anti-Defamation League to revise its definition of racism, in a fraught move that reflects our current culture wars around race and identity.

By odd coincidence, the day before Goldberg’s ill-advised comments, the ADL came under fire on Twitter over a definition of racism on its website that seemed to exclude antisemitism — even though the 108-year-old organization’s foundational mission is to “stop the defamation of the Jewish people.”

Until 2020, the ADL defined racism as “the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another” and that people’s “social and moral traits” are predetermined by “inborn biological characteristics.” In July 2020, after the racial justice protests that followed George Floyd’s murder, that was changed to, “The marginalization and/​or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”

But are Jews — a unique demographic in which religion, culture and ethnicity overlap — white? According to a 2020 Pew Research Center poll, 92% of American Jews identify as racially white. Yet Jewish progressives have heatedly debated the issue. Some think assigning “whiteness” to Jews negates their historical oppression (and the hatred they face from white supremacists). Others argue that Jews of European origin have virtually always been treated as “white” in America and must acknowledge the privileges they have enjoyed as a result.

Yet if Jews are white, then, under the ADL’s 2020 definition, victims of antisemitic attacks are not victims of racism — and the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has railed against “Satanic” Jews and compared them to termites, is not a racist. That’s absurd: Antisemites almost invariably regard Jews as a race.

Critics of the “social justice” progressivism that gained prominence in the mid-2010s have repeatedly warned that its focus on “whiteness” and “privilege” tended to erase antisemitism. In 2018, the Women’s March was shaken by reports that one of its co-founders, Tamika Mallory, made remarks singling out Jews for helping “uphold white supremacy” and for their alleged role in the slave trade. Now, the fallout from the ADL’s redefinition of racism and the Goldberg flap reinforces concerns about the erasure of antisemitism.

The ADL’s 2020 formulation poses other problems. While it accurately defines one aspect of racism — America’s historical system of racial privilege and its modern legacy — it leaves out many others, from personal prejudice and hate to extremist ideologies. (Is a hate crime non-racist if victim and perpetrator are both racial minorities?) ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt noted that it didn’t even speak to his own family’s experience of racism “as Jews from the Middle East.”

Now the ADL has a new interim definition, subject to feedback and further change: “Racism occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity.” It’s not perfect — some of the most virulent forms of racism involve hostility and negative bias rather than favoritism — but it’s a good start, as is Greenblatt’s mea culpa. This shift shows that a pushback against trendy progressivism can work and reclaim a more sensible center.