Was Albert Einstein a racist? The German scientist could visualize the universe but apparently had trouble recognizing humanity in its immense wealth.
A recently published English translation of his travel diaries shows that he expressed racist and xenophobic views in private (although he later criticized it).
The entries inAlbert Einstein’s The Travel Diaries: Far East, Palestine, and Spain, 1922-1923 were made during a period when Einstein visited the Middle East, Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon), China, and Japan.
In a newspaper entry, he described the Chinese as“hard-working, disgusting and obtuse people”and criticized them because “they do not sit on benches while they eat, but squat as Europeans do when they relieve themselves in the lush forest.”
They are “a peculiar nation often more like automatons than people.”
In another entry, Einstein said: “It would be a shame if these Chinese were supplanting all other races.” He added: “For people like us, the very thought is indescribably bleak.”
Insulted other cultures tooHence, reflecting on the nasty comments he made about the Chinese and Japanese inhabitants in his private diaries, it is not particularly easy to answer the question of whether Einstein was a racist.
On the one hand, there is an opinion that even this famous, humanitarian and open-minded scientisthe was inevitably a man of his time.Consequently, we cannot expect that, despite his visceral aversion to Nazism, he would rise above a prevailing culture in which open expression of prejudice was routine.
We might look at him now with dismay, but to label him racist would be to indulge a presentism that does nothing more than make us feel superior. Also, we must bear in mind that Einstein wrote all these things without the intention of being published.
Where does this image of racism come from?
We must recognize that Einstein hardly saw China ; it only stopped briefly in Shanghai and Hong Kong. And his diaries are a mixture of appreciation and criticism: “You have to love and admire this country,” he said of Japan, for example, along with the bewilderment and stereotypes of values. It is the familiar response of a European alienated by cultural, linguistic and emotional differences.
Still, it is true that such views seem justly disgusting by today’s standards, and it is a shame that Einstein, a forward-thinking and tolerant internationalist, wrote such comments. But Einstein was no role model. It’s no secret that his treatment of his first wife, Mileva Marić, bordered on the monstrous after their love was “turned off.” The list of conditions Einstein drew up in 1914 to continue living together is comically gruesome: she was actually his maid and housekeeper.
