Diary reveals Albert Einstein's 'racist thoughts'

Albert Einstein. Photo / File

In 1946, Albert Einstein stood in front of students at the oldest historically black college in the United States and decried the oppression of African Americans.

"There is separation of coloured people from white people in the United States. That separation is not a disease of coloured people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it," the Jewish scientist said during a commencement speech at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

But newly published private travel diaries reveal another side.

The Nobel-winning physicist harboured racist thoughts about those who did not look like him, said Ze'ev Rosenkranz, senior editor and assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology who edited The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein.

The diaries cover a period from October 1922 to March 1923, when he and wife Elsa travelled by ship to the Mediterranean, Sri Lanka, China and Japan.

He calls the Chinese "industrious, filthy, obtuse people", and describes the locals in Port Said, Egypt, who would board the ship to sell their goods as "Levantines of every shade ... as if spewed from hell".

He says of the people in Colombo, Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, that they "live in great filth and considerable stench down on the ground, do little, and need little".

According to a piece in the Guardian about the diaries, he describes Chinese children as "spiritless and obtuse", and says it would be "a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races".

He also calls China "a peculiar herd-like nation", and that the Chinese are "more like automatons than people" and that there is "little difference" between Chinese men and women. He goes on to ask how the men are "incapable of defending themselves" from female "fatal attraction".

- Agencies