This is rather shocking given Einsteins reputation as a humanist and his recognition by the UNHCR in support of refugees. Its a reminder that the first place to fight racism is inside each of us.
Beware of your heroes.
Also, pretty much any famous person from before about 1975, whose name you draw out of a hat, will be racist and xenophobic.
And beware where you write your most private thoughts. You might think they are for your eyes only, but if you become famous, then 100 years later, someone might publish them.
While I agree with the gist of your thoughts, the auther did deal with them near the end of his peace.
Well he seemed more of a fan of the Japanese than the Chinese.
Yeah-- I’m fortunate that one of my heroes, for all her suicidal ideation and general black cloudiness, was very anti-racist going back to the 1920s, and democrat-cum-socialist going back almost as far. She might be called out for a slight bit of anti-Semitism, but she had a Jewish father she didn’t get along with, and a strong streak of self-deprecation. Chalk it up to that.
Dorothy Parker.
Incidentally, she had no children, or a living spouse, so she left her estate, and the proceeds from her work, to Dr. King, and he left them to the NAACP. So any time you by a copy of anything by Dorothy Parker, the royalties benefit the NAACP, who gave a home to her mortal remains (ashes).
In 1922? I’d say it’s the opposite of shocking, as a reaction to encountering a totally alien culture, people largely living in poverty with poor education, in a world where differences between “races” were widely accepted as a biological fact. The enlightened modern understanding that there are no significant innate differences between human subpopulations was far from obvious in such a world. It would have been a great virtue for Einstein to have been one of the few to see this at the time, but I think it’s ridiculous to chastise him for failing to see it.
Take a look at mainstream BBC television programming fifty years later!
The world changed a lot between 1923 (when Einstein wrote in that journal) and 1950 (when the UNHCR was founded). I’d be surprised if most people (including Einstein) didn’t as well.
Not to mention, a lot of scientists’ perceptions of racial differences changed after the discovery of DNA. (Yes, I know Watson’s record on racism.)
Also, I realize Einstein wasn’t a youth in 1920, but he did live for a while after that. How much has your thinking changed in 35 years? I know I had a few opinions at age 18 that were enlightened, but most of them were pretty embarrassing. I imagine that if I live another 35 years, I’ll be embarrassed by things I’m saying today. Heck, in 10 years (gawd willing), I’ll probably be embarrassed.
We have the Dope to remind us of our unfortunate opinions. 
We all have unsavory opinions of one sort or another if you dig deeply enough. I am more interested in how a person actually conducts themself towards others than what they wrote down in a diary at one particular point in a long life.
Particularly since during the years between 1920 and 1955, the Second World War occurred, which might have changed one’s opinions about all sorts of things.
WW2 was a culmination of decades of government sponsored antisemitism in central and eastern Europe. Einstein would have been well aware of it. A man with his IQ should have easily understood how holding opinions like wondering how Chinese men could stand to have sex with Chinese women was impermissible. He was no great looker himself.
That’s because you’re thinking only of the old-man pictures of him that are so iconic. Actually, when he was young, he wasn’t so bad.
What I’m hearing a lot of people say is that his attitudes were all relative.
Okay, okay… I’m going…
Yes, this.
What do you call the cognitive bias when we assume that what is well-known to us should be obvious to other people? Maybe the Curse of Knowledge, though that’s not exactly right: that’s more about a problem in communication.
But whatever it is I’m thinking of, I think it’s what’s going on here, and what happens very often when we decry the racist (et al) attitudes of people who lived in earlier eras.
I will reiterate what I’ve often said on these board:
The hardest thing for people to understand is that people in the past thought differently than we do.
Corollary: people are so inculcated in modern attitudes that they not only don’t believe they are doing it, and will vehemently object to have it pointed out.
So, while this is clearly a sign of racism in the twenty-first century, it was not considered so a century ago.
Jewish teachings going back centuries have taught tolerance and the oneness of humankind.
It’s not like you don’t encounter people today who are part of a minority or disadvantaged group, who argue passionately for that group, but then have no problem being bigoted towards members of another minority. They have their beliefs that they believe make it okay.
And many of them are quite intelligent, because a high IQ doesn’t make you good at understanding sociology. It doesn’t even make you good at critical thinking. He was good at his specialty.
Oh, and the post above mine, you are quoting a modern interpretation of what those Scriptures teach. Christians today also say that our Scripture forbids racism, but that wasn’t what (many) Christians said in 1920.
Since you quoted from Leviticus, presumably you’re also asserting that Christian teachings going back centuries have taught tolerance and the oneness of humankind.
So is your argument that we should retrospectively condemn all Christians and Jews throughout history who did not have the wisdom to cherry-pick that one specific verse from the Old Testament, ignore many other horrifying and morally bankrupt verses from the Old Testament; and did not have the insight and foresight to see far beyond the scientific ignorance and cultural norms of their era to embrace modern enlightened ethical standards?