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.
In China, the man who famously once described racism as “a disease of white people”
describes the “industrious, filthy, obtuse people” he observes.
"Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.”
Further passages in the diaries see him writing of the Chinese that “even those
reduced to working like horses never give the impression of conscious suffering.
A peculiar herd-like nation [ … ] often more like automatons than people.”
In Colombo in Ceylon, Einstein writes of how the locals “live in great filth
and considerable stench at ground level” adding that they “do little, and
need little. The simple economic cycle of life.”
Einstein’s perceptions of the Japanese he meets are, in contrast, more positive:
“Japanese unostentatious, decent, altogether very appealing,” he writes.
“Pure souls as nowhere else among people. One has to love and admire this country.”
But Rosenkranz points out that he also concludes that the “intellectual needs of
this nation seem to be weaker than their artistic ones ? natural disposition?”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/12/einsteins-travel-diaries-reveal-shocking-xenophobia
