Would you consider Albert Einsteins Travel Diary Observations Racist?

Albert Einsteins Travel Diary was published and he gives his observations of the different cultures he visited, do you consider him a racist? His harshest criticism was for the Chinese people.

Einstein's travel diaries reveal physicist's racism

This is the first time the diaries have been published as a standalone volume in English.

Published by Princeton University Press, The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein: The Far East, Palestine, and Spain, 1922-1923 was edited by Ze'ev Rosenkranz, assistant director of the California Institute of Technology's Einstein Papers Project.

Einstein travelled from Spain to the Middle East and via Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, on to China and Japan.

The physicist describes arriving in Port Said in Egypt and facing "Levantines of every shade... as if spewed from hell" who come aboard their ship to sell their goods.

He also describes his time in Colombo in Ceylon, writing of the people: "They live in great filth and considerable stench down on the ground, do little, and need little."

But the famous physicist reserves his most cutting comments for Chinese people.

According to a piece in the Guardian about the diaries, he describes Chinese children as "spiritless and obtuse", and calls it "a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races".

In other entries he calls China "a peculiar herd-like nation," and "more like automatons than people", before claiming there is "little difference" between Chinese men and women, and questioning how the men are "incapable of defending themselves" from female "fatal attraction".


Noted for both his scientific brilliance and his humanitarianism, Albert Einstein emigrated to the US in 1933 after the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

The Jewish scientist described racism as "a disease of white people" in a 1946 speech at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania - the first university in the US to award degrees to black people.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44472277
https://www.livescience.com/62813-einstein-racist.html
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/06/13/einsteins-diaries-contain-shocking-details-his-racism.html
Interesting. At first I was preparing to deny he was racist. But...then I read it. And yea I think you are right. By definition he is being racist (you know->attributing a particular perceived negative attribute to all people of a certain race). That is in fact racist. However, if some of what he is saying is majorly true...then perhaps it's not racist.
 
Oh my, what's the play here?

Quite tempted, I am, to lift Trotsky's temp ban. He'd have the balls to say what he's been trained to think, and call Einstein "fucking stupid".

No compromises.

Why did he get the hammer?
 
It would be interesting to know if he retained those racist views his entire life or if he came to see how wrong they were later on.



HP Lovecraft was virulently racist even by the standards of his own era, which is saying a lot. He was a xenophobe in the most absurdly literal sense of the term.
How wrong his honest opinions were at that time? Probably not.
 
Honestly believing something doesn't make that something any less racist or despicable.
I'm not getting into how you are pushing insanity.. But you are encouraging insanity.
 
Somebody in the 1920s have prejudicial views. You don't say. Do you want a cookie?
 
I'm not getting into how you are pushing insanity.. But you are encouraging insanity.
His position is that vile beliefs aren't excused by sincerity. That's hardly an insane position, and it's not clear why you think he is "pushing insanity."

Here's an example of a vile belief:

"Americans Indians are subhuman animals who should be exterminated."

There are people in the world who have sincerely believed this. How did sincerely believing it make the position itself more palatable/less racist?
 
His position is that vile beliefs aren't excused by sincerity. That's hardly an insane position, and it's not clear why you think he is "pushing insanity."

Here's an example of a vile belief:

"Americans Indians are subhuman animals who should be exterminated."

There are people in the world who have sincerely believed this. How did sincerely believing it make the position itself more palatable/less racist?
Calling for extermination is different than anecdotal observations. He was viewing humanity the way an alien would. That's kind of how truly smart science literate people view things.. As an alien making a documentary.
 
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