ZitatNewly published private travel diaries have revealed Albert Einstein's racist and xenophobic views.
Written between October 1922 to March 1923, the diaries track his experiences in the Far East and Middle East.
In them, he makes sweeping and negative generalisations, for example calling the Chinese "industrious, filthy, obtuse people".
Einstein would later in life advocate for civil rights in the US, calling racism "a disease of white people".
[snip]
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.
Einstein's political outlook was decidedly left. In fact, he once said of Lenin: I honor Lenin as a man who completely sacrificed himself and devoted all his energy to the realization of social justice. I do not consider his methods practical, but one thing is certain: men of his type are the guardians and restorers of humanity.