Albert Einstein's racist travel diaries
by Rob Beschizza from on (#3S974)
Albert Einstein's diaries reveal starkly racist sentiments well into middle age. The BBC reports that he disliked China most of all: "industrious, filthy, obtuse people" about whom "it would be a pity if [they] supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary."
On Egyptians: "Levantines of every shade... spewed from hell"
On Sri Lankans: "They live in great filth and considerable stench down on the ground, do little, and need little."
More on the Chinese, and women to boot:
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".
The elder Einstein became quite sharply anti-racist. Something weird must have happened in the 1930s or thereabouts to change his mind.