Einstein’s travel diaries reveal racist views of Chinese: industrious, filthy and obtuse
Excerpts from Einstein’s diaries written during his tour of Asia in the 1920s show his shocking racist and misogynist views. The theoretical physicist is considered a humanitarian, and his private views contradict this, writes the author
The publication of Albert Einstein’s private diaries detailing his tour of Asia in the 1920s reveals the theoretical physicist and humanitarian icon’s racist attitudes to the people he met on his travels, particularly the Chinese.
Written between October 1922 and March 1923, the diaries see the scientist musing on his travels, science, philosophy and art. In China, the man who 20 years later famously described racism as “a disease of white people” describes the “industrious, filthy, obtuse people” he observes.
He notes how the “Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.”
After earlier writing of the “abundance of offspring” and the “fecundity” of the Chinese, he goes on to say: “It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”
Ze’ev Rosenkranz, senior editor and assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology, said: “I think a lot of comments strike us as pretty unpleasant – what he says about the Chinese in particular.
“They’re kind of in contrast to the public image of the great humanitarian icon. I think it’s quite a shock to read those and contrast them with his more public statements. They’re more off guard, he didn’t intend them for publication.”
Rosenkranz has edited and translated The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein, which have just been published for the first time as a stand-alone volume by Princeton University Press, including facsimiles of the diary pages.