Would you consider Albert Einsteins Travel Diary Observations Racist?

[Black Helicopters]

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.

How long is he banned for?

 

[JuniorSonGoku]

Yes. He was a racist and a mathematical genius. Same goes for Nikola Tesla.

People are a mixed bag. Celebrity status is a fascinating component of human psychology, elevating people into categories that don't pragmatically exist.

 

[SaiWa]

After the Chinese take over the world we should build a time machine and bring 1920's Einstein over. He'd probably have a stroke!

That's what you'd do with the time machine?...

i'd go back to last year and bet everything I own on the eagles winning the superbowl before the season started... then I would have won several hundred of millions instead of 4k...

 

[Rygu]

Meh, Chinese people can be the most racist people on the planet. All races are racist. Everyone is racist. Race is racist.

 

[Magooglie]

That's what you'd do with the time machine?...

i'd go back to last year and bet everything I own on the eagles winning the superbowl before the season started... then I would have won several hundrend of millions instead of a 4k...

Laughs before cash as the saying goes.

 

[SaiWa]

Meh, Chinese people can be the most racist people on the planet. All races are racist. Everyone is racist. Race is racist.

Fuck you asshole..

We Chinese people ARE the most racist people on the planet as a race...

Don't half ass your allegations with this can or cannot bullshit...

 

[Rygu]

Fuck you asshole..

We Chinese people ARE the most racist people on the planet as a race...

Don't half ass your allegations with this can or cannot bullshit...

My bad, my bad.

 

[leto1776]

That's what you'd do with the time machine?...

i'd go back to last year and bet everything I own on the eagles winning the superbowl before the season started... then I would have won several hundred of millions instead of 4k...

Or bet that an expansion team would make it to the Stanley Cup finals.

 

[TidWell]

meh...

probably some of this shit is taken out of context. plus that was written he was still living in Germany. not too far fetched considered where he grew up and where he travelled.. he probably saw some really fucked up shit abroad...

He joined the NAACP in Princeton and championed for civil rights for African Americans... sooooo is he racist..? i'd say no.. not later in his life in the US for sure.

Donald Sterling who got caught on a private convo saying racist things about Blacks, was also a member of NAACP or was about to be given an award by them as well.

I dont think Einstein is racist in the way of Hatred and wishing death, he was just stating a personal opinion from his observations, but to say because someone joined NAACP means they are not racist is funny, its like saying a person who wears a Cross is a good practicing sinless Christian. You will never really know since there are people who are wolf and sheeps clothing.

Look at Harvey Weinstein he was an outspoken feminist and look how he got exposed sexing up all those women and begging and forcing them to watch him jerk off or suck him off to keep their jobs.

 

[SMillard]

I wouldn't call it racist, possibly politically incorrect but so often the truth is politically incorrect.

They are his comments based on his observations nothing more. Some of which I can relate to, regardless the man gave us this gem.

So cut him some slack.
Little known fact, this picture was taken after Marie Curie asked Albert if he liked fish tacos

 

[Orgasmo]

At the time he traveled to Asia, China was still a backwater shithole. You're going to find the same conditions in impoverish parts of the world. While it's clearly a generalization, but it's not racist IMO.

On the other hand, why do we take what a physicist said about race so seriously? You take what your doctor tells you about the stock market seriously?

 

[Amerikuracana]

People just want to push our values/morals on people of the past. It doesnt really work that way. Im much more concerned with what people do, and what they say to the public, instead of old personal journals from when they were younger. People change their views as they age.

Yeah.. They usually become even more honest.

 

[Stranger Come Knocking]

Ban black holes. The ones in space I mean.

 

[Amerikuracana]

At the time he traveled to Asia, China was still a backwater shithole. You're going to find the same conditions in impoverish parts of the world. While it's clearly a generalization, but it's not racist IMO.

On the other hand, why do we take what a physicist said about race so seriously? You take what your doctor tells you about the stock market seriously?

He was a genius, and that usually carries over. What he said about Chinese culture isn't that shocking. Observations made as a tourist, and not taken from the inside, should not be overly appreciated, however. Is it shocking that he said Chinese are more hive like, with less individual personality? Would humanity nitvlose something should they be the leasing and prevailing culture? They have their strengths and weaknesses like every other culture.

 

[robotsonic]

At the time he traveled to Asia, China was still a backwater shithole. You're going to find the same conditions in impoverish parts of the world. While it's clearly a generalization, but it's not racist IMO.

On the other hand, why do we take what a physicist said about race so seriously? You take what your doctor tells you about the stock market seriously?

China was never really a backwater shithole, they fell behind the West massively in technology and science due to their insular, arrogant attitudes, but they were always a relatively powerful country and their culture is ancient and unique, was pretty much the precursor to all East Asian culture.

I guarantee you if you took a Chinese mandarin from the Qing imperial court and surrounded him with English coal miners he might have made similar comments, this whole 'crucify people with what they said in the past' shit is asinine, doubly so when certain guys get a pass...Muhammed Ali is on record as saying he didn't believe in the mixing of the races, nobody ever seems to bring that up when they're talking about how great he was. Gandhi said lots of really racist shit about South African blacks, again, he gets a pass....Malcom X is seen as a hero by many blacks and he was a hateful piece of shit criminal.

Blacks and asians always like to act like they're horrified at the very idea of racism but we know that it's not the case because they are so often racist themselves and many think they are justified in doing so.

 

[ObsoleteSoul]

Yeah.. They usually become even more honest.

And more wise and understanding.

 

[JadeOwl]

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

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.

First Hp Lovecraft now Einstein. When is the left going to let dead men rest

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.

 

[JadeOwl]

I'm assuming, based on @alanb's post that something has recently come out re: HP.

I've read some of his stuff. I'm not a huge fan, but I like a lot of stuff created by those he's inspired.

The fact that HP Lovecraft was absurdly racist even by the standards of his own time has never been a secret, but it is something that tends to be mentioned more in recent times, which is what I think @alanb is referring to. The propensity people have to lionize talented people without acknowledging their nastier side tends to generate this reaction.

And while ordinarily I would not be one to try to analyze everything about an author's work through the lenses of his personal believes, in Lovecraft's case you would have to be blind not to be able to see the straight conductive line from his extreme racism and xenophobia to the themes of fear of the others, mixing with subhuman race, etc. that permeate his work.

In a sense, I consider him a valuable example for people who have trouble understanding the mindset of a racist. Reading Lovecraft's work and feeling the terror it inspires, while keeping in mind that this is the same fear that racists and xenophobes feel when thinking about all those who are different from them.

 

[TheGreatA]

The fact that HP Lovecraft was absurdly racist even by the standards of his own time has never been a secret, but it is something that tends to be mentioned more in recent times, which is what I think @alanb is referring to. The propensity people have to lionize talented people without acknowledging their nastier side tends to generate this reaction.

And while ordinarily I would not be one to try to analyze everything about an author's work through the lenses of his personal believes, in Lovecraft's case you would have to be blind not to be able to see the straight conductive line from his extreme racism and xenophobia to the themes of fear of the others, mixing with subhuman race, etc. that permeate his work.

In a sense, I consider him a valuable example for people who have trouble understanding the mindset of a racist. Reading Lovecraft's work and feeling the terror it inspires, while keeping in mind that this is the same fear that racists and xenophobes feel when thinking about all those who are different from them.

Even in Lovecraft's case, his opinions changed quite a bit as he got older. But we did not see the results of that change as he was essentially a physical wreck by his 40's and died at an early age.

I think he was a brilliant mind, fully conscious of his inadequacies, who was limited by his physical condition. He made better arguments against himself, than probably anyone else could.

"I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstractacademic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today … & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections, flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs!

All this comes up with humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well …. I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showing-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better!

That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get around more in 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done … except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all."

"As for your artificial conception of "splendid & traditional ways of life"—I feel quite confident that you are very largely constructing a mythological idealisation of something which never truly existed; a conventional picture based on the perusal of books which followed certain hackneyed lines in the matter of incidents, sentiments, & situations, & which never had a close relationship to the actual societies they professed to depict . . . In some ways the life of certain earlier periods had marked advantages over life today, but there were compensating disadvantages which would make many hesitate about a choice. Some of the most literarily attractive ages had a coarseness, stridency, & squalor which we would find insupportable . . . Modern neurotics, lolling in stuffed easy chairs, merely make a myth of these old periods & use them as the nuclei of escapist daydreams whose substance resembles but little the stern actualities of yesterday.

That is undoubtedly the case with me—only I'm fully aware of it. Except in certain selected circles, I would undoubtedly find my own 18th century insufferably coarse, orthodox, arrogant, narrow, & artificial. What I look back upon nostalgically is a dream-world which I invented at the age of four from picture books & the Georgian hill streets of Old Providence. . . . There is something artificial & hollow & unconvincing about self-conscious intellectual traditionalism—this being, of course, the only valid objection against it. The best sort of traditionalism is that easy-going eclectic sort which indulges in no frenzied pulmotor stunts, but courses naturally down from generation to generation; bequeathing such elements as really are sound, losing such as have lost value, & adding any which new conditions may make necessary. . . . In short, young man, I have no quarrel with the principle of traditionalism as such, but I have a decided quarrel with everything that is insincere, inappropriate, & disproportionate; for these qualities mean ugliness & weakness in the most offensive degree. I object to the feigning of artificial moods on the part of literary moderns who cannot even begin to enter into the life & feelings of the past which they claim to represent . . .

If there were any reality or depth of feeling involved, the case would be different; but almost invariably the neotraditionalists are sequestered persons remote from any real contacts or experience with life . . . For any person today to fancy he can truly enter into the life & feeling of another period is really nothing but a confession of ignorance of the depth & nature of life in its full sense. This is the case with myself. I feel I am living in the 18th century, though my objective judgment knows better, & realises the vast difference from the real thing. The one redeeming thing about my ignorance of life & remoteness from reality is that I am fully conscious of it, hence (in the last few years) make allowances for it, & do not pretend to an impossible ability to enter into the actual feelings of this or any other age. The emotions of the past were derived from experiences, beliefs, customs, living conditions, historic backgrounds, horizons, &c. &c. so different from our own, that it is simply silly to fancy we can duplicate them, or enter warmly & subjectively into all phases of their aesthetic expression."

 

[JamesRussler]

Cancel his show!

Maybe he changed his views later in life?

It's obvious that his diaries were hacked using a Wayback Machine.