Title : The racism Albert Einstein — writing in his travel diary in the 1920s.
link : The racism Albert Einstein — writing in his travel diary in the 1920s.
The racism Albert Einstein — writing in his travel diary in the 1920s.
The diaries are newly published, so the issue is apt, the Washington Post apparently thinks, because no one can escape the glare of The Reckoning. WaPo finds the most politically incorrect things The Genius saw fit to write to himself as he endured the rigors of travel nearly a century ago:The average Japanese, Einstein wrote, is “unproblematic, impersonal, he cheerfully fulfills the social function which befalls him without pretension, but proud of his community and nation. Forsaking his traditional ways in favor of European ones does not undermine his national pride.”I'll just say 2 things.
While Einstein used male pronouns for deeper reflections about the Japanese, his thoughts about women were more about their physical appearance than their personality. Japanese women, he wrote as he observed them on the ship, “look ornate and bewildered. … Black-eyed, black-haired, large-headed, scurrying.”
His reflections about the Chinese, with whom he spent far less time, were more callous, even insulting. Though he called the Chinese “industrious,” he also described them as “filthy” and “obtuse.” They’re a “peculiar herd-like nation,” Einstein wrote, “often more like automatons than people.” He saw them as intellectually inferior, quoting — instead of challenging — Portuguese teachers he met during his travels who claimed that the Chinese “are incapable of being trained to think logically” and “have no talent for mathematics.”
There was, as Rosenkranz described, a “healthy dose of extreme misogyny”:
I noticed how little difference there is between men and women; I don’t understand what kind of fatal attraction Chinese women possess which enthralls the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring.His reflections in the few days he spent in China also reveal Einstein’s tendency to perceive foreigners as a threat.
“It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races,” he wrote. “For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”
First, this is another argument against travel. The #1 pro-travel argument that I have heard in my years of openly questioning the benefits of traveling the world is that it is highly valuable to encounter the people who live in different places. But you'll never run out of individual human beings to meet and get to know in your own home town. The idea of traveling to meet people is that groups of people living far from your home will be different in important ways that you ought to perceive and understand. The experience will broaden you. But observations and beliefs about groups of people are stereotypes. You're setting yourself up to be racist. Look at Albert Einstein — The Genius. He went to Japan and China, and he formed ideas about how the Japanese and Chinese are different. If that's something we enlightened people of today are not supposed to do, then there's a big problem with that #1 pro-travel argument.
Second, there are still writers today, very popular American writers, who travel and compare the Japanese and Chinese. Check out David Sedaris's "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls" — the chapter "#2 to Go."
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