MSNBC Host Toure Apologizes for ‘Power of Whiteness’ Tweet about Holocaust Survivors

MSNBC host Toure apologized Tuesday for a tweet about the “power of whiteness” in which he appeared to suggest that Holocaust survivors benefitted from their skin color, saying he was “very sorry” and would “make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Toure’s Twitter account had lain dormant since the May 23 post, but after facing a torrent of negative tweets and the criticism of a major Jewish organization, Toure posted a series of apologetic messages:

Late last week, I foolishly got involved in a twitter exchange regarding an article about reparations... (1 of 3).

— Touré (@Toure) May 27, 2014

It was a dumb idea by me to debate serious and nuanced topics in 140 characters or less... (Cont.)

— Touré (@Toure) May 27, 2014

In an attempt to comment on racism in post World War II America, I used a shorthand that was insensitive and wrong. (Cont.)

— Touré (@Toure) May 27, 2014

...I am very sorry and will make sure this doesn’t happen again.

— Touré (@Toure) May 27, 2014

On Tuesday, Efraim Zuroff, the Israel office director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group, told TheBlaze that the suggestion that Jews who had faced a genocide benefitted from their skin color was “obviously absurd and smacks of intense and disgusting anti-Semitism. It’s reverse racism basically.”

Toure was responding to another Twitter user who had written, “My family survived a concentration camp, came to the US w/ nothing, LEGALLY, and made it work.”