Back when Johnson became Goldberg, Jews weren’t considered “white,” exactly. And they weren’t not-white either. The point here is that such a classification system is meaningless when it comes to Jews, no matter the color of their skin.

Ascribing commonalities between Jews and non-Jews is historically nonsensical, considering that Jews make up an astonishingly homogeneous and tiny tribe of people who survived nearly two millennia on this earth without a homeland to call their own. That was understood when Johnson became Goldberg.

But it’s two generations since then. It’s obvious that a 2022 version of young Caryn Johnson would not choose the name Goldberg to gain that extra frisson of non-white pride.

In fact, Whoopi Goldberg should just drop the Goldberg now. There are dozens of survivors of the Holocaust who bear the name — and an untold number who died in the Shoah with it. Caryn Johnson stains them both.