Albert Einstein Called Racism “A Disease of White People” in His Little-Known Fight for Civil Rights

einstein speaks

Albert Einstein’s activ­i­ties as a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for peace were well-doc­u­ment­ed dur­ing his life­time. His celebri­ty as a famous physi­cist and one of the world’s most rec­og­niz­able faces lent a great deal of weight to his paci­fism, a view oth­er­wise not giv­en much con­sid­er­a­tion in the pop­u­lar press at almost any time in his­to­ry. How­ev­er, accord­ing to a 2006 book titled Ein­stein on Race and Racism by Fred Jerome and Roger Tay­lor, the sci­en­tist was also as pas­sion­ate about com­bat­ing racism and seg­re­ga­tion as he was about com­bat­ing war. This facet of Einstein’s life was vir­tu­al­ly ignored by the media, as was a vis­it he made in 1946 to Lin­coln Uni­ver­si­ty in Penn­syl­va­nia, the first degree-grant­i­ng col­lege for African-Amer­i­cans and the alma mater of Langston Hugh­es and Thur­good Mar­shall.

Invit­ed to Lin­coln to receive an hon­orary degree, Ein­stein gave a lec­ture on physics but also blunt­ly addressed the racial ani­mus that held the coun­try in its grip, report­ed­ly call­ing racism, “a dis­ease of white peo­ple” and say­ing he “did not intend to be qui­et” about his oppo­si­tion to seg­re­ga­tion and racist pub­lic pol­i­cy. Lest any­one think the Nobel-prize-win­ning physi­cist was pan­der­ing to his audi­ence, the Har­vard Gazette offers a com­pre­hen­sive sum­ma­ry of Einstein’s sup­port of pro­gres­sive anti-racist caus­es, includ­ing his per­son­al sup­port of mem­bers of Princeton’s black com­mu­ni­ty (he paid one man’s col­lege tuition), a town Prince­ton native Paul Robe­son once called “the north­ern­most town in the south.”

Ein­stein formed rela­tion­ships with sev­er­al promi­nent black leaders—inviting opera singer Mar­i­an Ander­son to stay in his home after she was refused a room at the Nas­sau Inn and appear­ing as a char­ac­ter wit­ness for W.E.B. Dubois when the lat­ter stood accused of “fail­ing to reg­is­ter as a for­eign agent.” But it was his 20-year friend­ship with Robe­son that seems cen­tral to his involve­ment in civ­il rights caus­es. The Har­vard Gazette writes:

Ein­stein met Paul Robe­son when the famous singer and actor came to per­form at Princeton’s McCarter The­atre in 1935. The two found they had much in com­mon. Both were con­cerned about the rise of fas­cism, and both gave their sup­port to efforts to defend the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment of Spain against the fas­cist forces of Fran­cis­co Fran­co. Ein­stein and Robe­son also worked togeth­er on the Amer­i­can Cru­sade to End Lynch­ing, in response to an upsurge in racial mur­ders as black sol­diers returned home in the after­math of World War II.

At the time of the Gazette arti­cle, 2007, a movie about Ein­stein and Robeson’s friend­ship was appar­ent­ly in the works, with Dan­ny Glover as Robe­son and Ben Kings­ley as Ein­stein. The project is appar­ent­ly stalled, but with the upsurge in pop­u­lar inter­est in the his­to­ry of civ­il rights—with the over­turn­ing of the Vot­ing Rights Act and the wide­spread cov­er­age of the 50th anniver­sary of the March on Washington—perhaps the project will see new life soon. I cer­tain­ly hope so.

via PourMe­Cof­fee

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Calls for Peace and Social Jus­tice in 1945

MLK’s Last Days and Final Speech

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


by | Permalink | Comments (44) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (44)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Pseu says:

    Huh. So Albert Ein­stein was racist. Learn some­thing new every day.

  • libtekhed says:

    Old Albert nev­er had any deal­ings with the Japan­ese then if he believes only white peo­ple are racist…

    • JJ says:

      Said by a “White Man” you should know because your race cre­at­ed and now defines racism. How about the White peo­ple who made and dropped a bomb on those racist Japan­ese. FYI you’re fore­head is abnor­mal­ly large.…

  • carolad says:

    Kudos to Ein­stein. The sad fact of the mat­ter is that racism has been preva­lent since the begin­ning of time whether it was reli­gious racism or race relat­ed. We have come a long way in this coun­try since the six­ties but we have a long way go yet. It’s sad that there are so many peo­ple today who are more inter­est­ed in fan­ning the flames than real­ly solv­ing the prob­lem.

    • Li580 says:

      Actu­al­ly racism did­n’t exist until about the 1500’s. Back when Greece and Rome were fis­rt blos­som­ing many of the famous(Herodotus, Stra­bo, Hippocrates,etc) pay their respects to Africans. In fact many of the Euro­peans would trav­el to Egypt/Ethiopia for learn­ing. There were many African gen­er­als in the roman army and there were 3–4 African popes. Racism can be unlearned…but it takes courage. We all need each oth­er’s help tho.

    • Supergirl says:

      Your state­ment is incor­rect. As “Li580” point­ed out, the con­struct of “race” did not real­ly exist until around the 16th cen­tu­ry and is thought to have orig­i­nat­ed with the Por­tuguese. The word you are look­ing for is “prej­u­dice”. Peo­ple have always been prej­u­diced against for­eign­ers and prob­a­bly always will be. How­ev­er, that’s more a mat­ter of nation­al­ism and fear of the unknown than any­thing else, which even less­er ani­mals exhib­it. Racism, how­ev­er, is the belief that your race is supe­ri­or to anoth­er. A very dif­fer­ent and far more dan­ger­ous idea alto­geth­er as one can even­tu­al­ly cease to be seen as for­eign­er once enough time pass­es and some oth­er new group aris­es. One can­not how­ev­er change the phys­i­cal mark­ers that soci­etal con­structs force on each “race” of peo­ple.

    • Supergirl says:

      Your state­ment is incor­rect. As “Li580” point­ed out, the con­struct of “race” did not real­ly exist until around the 16th cen­tu­ry and is thought to have orig­i­nat­ed with the Por­tuguese. The word you are look­ing for is “prej­u­dice”. Peo­ple have always been prej­u­diced against for­eign­ers and prob­a­bly always will be. How­ev­er, that’s more a mat­ter of nation­al­ism and fear of the unknown than any­thing else, which even less­er ani­mals exhib­it. Racism, how­ev­er, is the belief that your race is supe­ri­or to anoth­er. A very dif­fer­ent and far more dan­ger­ous idea alto­geth­er as one can even­tu­al­ly cease to be seen as for­eign­er once enough time pass­es and some oth­er new group aris­es. One can­not how­ev­er change the phys­i­cal mark­ers that soci­etal con­structs force on each “race” of peo­ple.

    • Supergirl says:

      Your state­ment is incor­rect. As “Li580” point­ed out, the con­struct of “race” did not real­ly exist until around the 16th cen­tu­ry and is thought to have orig­i­nat­ed with the Por­tuguese. The word you are look­ing for is “prej­u­dice”. Peo­ple have always been prej­u­diced against for­eign­ers and prob­a­bly always will be. How­ev­er, that’s more a mat­ter of nation­al­ism and fear of the unknown than any­thing else, which even less­er ani­mals exhib­it. Racism, how­ev­er, is the belief that your race is supe­ri­or to anoth­er. A very dif­fer­ent and far more dan­ger­ous idea alto­geth­er as one can even­tu­al­ly cease to be seen as for­eign­er once enough time pass­es and some oth­er new group aris­es. One can­not how­ev­er change the phys­i­cal mark­ers that soci­etal con­structs force on each “race” of peo­ple.

  • Pepper says:

    I’m glad Ein­stein was coura­geous enough to make this state­ment in regards to Amer­i­can racism. Amer­i­cans nev­er want to HONESTLY speak about racism and how it’s tear­ing this coun­try apart. Racism is still very preva­lent today and only because no one wants to have an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion. There is no under­stand­ing of what racism is and now peo­ple think that when you call out some white peo­ple on their racist behav­ior then lo and behold that per­son is racist. Talk­ing about racism and its ori­gin is not about blam­ing but about exam­in­ing ones beliefs, behav­ior and ones reac­tions to racist beliefs and behav­iors. When Amer­i­cans grow up and learn to speak about race open­ly and hon­est­ly will we grow as a coun­try where ALL the cit­i­zens are seen as equal and afford­ed equal oppor­tu­ni­ty.

    • Sam Malloy says:

      I agree. Also it’s not just racism from the whites any­more. It’s racism from all sides. EVERYONE needs to become more tol­er­ant. Although at the time of Ein­stein the racism, espe­cial­ly in the gov­ern­ment was com­ing from whites obvi­ous­ly.

  • Jack says:

    white peo­ple are racist because they have been allowed to achieve a lot through killing peo­ple from oth­er racial groups!. and these peo­ple havent had enough will to defend them­selves

    • JJ says:

      Again so only white peo­ple have the will to do what it takes? In Ger­many they have just past law for a new 3rd gen­der, this is the lega­cy of racism at its height. That now reces­sive gene can be passed on to oth­er races, that is why they raped and killed to pre­serve and sus­tain the Euro­pean fea­tures that define race.

      • Sam Malloy says:

        That was just inco­her­ent ram­ble. Would you care to re-write that non­sense into some­thing that makes a bit of sense. They passed a law of what? 3rd gen­der? And how does rape have to do any­thing? Are you a loony. No you’re total­ly a loony.

  • _tjb-E9d4d says:

    Step 1: write post about Ein­stein being against racism.

    Step 2: watch racists com­plain.

  • sherlock holmes says:

    Racism IS Amer­i­can cul­ture. The whole cul­ture itself is racist. Amer­i­can cul­ture is a white suprema­cy cul­ture, where whites have more pow­er in this soci­ety than non­whites. After 500 years, we still favor the lighter skin than the dark­er skin in Amer­i­ca, such as employ­ment hir­ing, hol­ly­wood films, dat­ing, edu­ca­tion sys­tem, jus­tice sys­tem, etc. Racism has not got­ten bet­ter over time. It is only the form of racism that has evolved over time. Amer­i­ca was born out of racism and geno­cide. It’s the first nation in the world that was born racist. We are all racists in Amer­i­ca, we all judge each oth­er base on racial stereo­types on the first impres­sion. And the stereo­types are rein­forced by the media.

    Like I always said “If you ain’t racist enough, you ain’t Amer­i­can enough.”

  • sherlock holmes says:

    White suprema­cy is an idea. White suprema­cists are peo­ple who believe or pro­mote the idea of white suprema­cy. And you don’t need to be wear­ing pointy white hats nor hav­ing a swasti­ka tat­too to be one. In fact, you don’t even need to be white to be a white suprema­cist. We all believe in white suprema­cy, espe­cial­ly in Amer­i­ca.

    We all say we love chi­nese food and mex­i­can food. But if I ask you to pick a restau­rant for your anniver­sary, how like­ly how you gonna pick a chi­nese or mex­i­can restau­rant? No, white suprema­cy cul­ture pro­motes that we should go to french or ital­ian because they are “high­er class” than chi­nese or mex­i­can.

    Name the world famous artists. Are they all white? Or major­i­ty are white? White suprema­cy cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion sys­tem taught us that Euro­pean artists are the ones we should idol­ize, they are the ones we should fol­low. Anoth­er pro­mo­tion of white suprema­cy.

    Not only our behav­ior has been con­di­tioned to white suprema­cy by Amer­i­can cul­ture, our way of think­ing is too.

  • Humanistic Revolution says:

    The Isis Papers explains much of the issue of racism pret­ty well.
    I am con­nect­ed spir­i­tu­al­ly to all my peo­ple who were torn from their homes and forced into slav­ery.
    The British so called empire is built on the prof­it of this filthy trade so when an une­d­u­cat­ed eng­lish man tells me to get out of his coun­try I tell him to in fact get out of My land.
    You see, the surfer these sim­ple peo­ple use on their cere­als, the art gal­leries they vis­it to pre­tend that they are civ­i­lized and cul­tured all exits direct­ly because of my broth­er’s and sis­ter’s who died in the mist bru­tal of ways.
    The Ger­man roy­al fam­i­ly in this coun­try were involved in this trade of human kid­nap.
    The Ele­phant and Cas­tle
    tube sta­tion and var­i­ous pubs of that name are named so to CELEBRATE the sheer evil con­nec­tion the roy­al fam­i­ly had and still has with slav­ery.
    The Jamaican Prime Min­is­ter under­stand­ably asked for The british to give up all colo­nial pow­er of land, what hap­pened?
    The sim­ple­ton fake dis­gust­ing so called major­i­ty in this coun­try shout­ed this idea down through var­i­ous media out­lets and har­ry was sent to Jamaica to tell the Prime Min­is­ter to shut up her blood­clart on such mat­ters.
    Who ever says the effects of slav­ery, colo­nial­ism both heav­i­ly relat­ed are over are liv­ing in a fairy world.

  • Humanistic Revolution says:

    I meant sug­ar as in Lyle and Tate.
    I try my hard­est to see good in ALL peo­ple but it is some­times hard when you are aware there is a con­scious effect to cull humans of melan­i­nat­ed skin which is every­one not white skinned.
    From forced ster­il­iza­tion in Israel of the Eithiopi­an Jews to the African girls and women in AS and else­where to con­tin­u­al­ly oppress­ing or try­ing to oppress all peo­ple with melanin.
    Par­tic­u­lar­ly in the U.S the white pop­u­la­tion has decreased for the under 5’s, in short while not every­where but in cer­tain loca­tions and in rela­tion to spe­cif­ic demo­graph­ics white peo­ple as we know are declin­ing and this can not be allowed to hap­pen.
    So set up and encour­age abor­tion of Black babies but call it ‘Planned Par­ent­hood’.
    Anoth­er way to car­ry out eugen­ics in order to main­tain the sta­tus quo regard­ing pop­u­la­tion rates of whites.
    Not all white per­sons are overt­ly racist but they do ALL ben­e­fit from the well thought out spo­ken and unspo­ken dynam­ic of white suprema­cy.
    This insid­i­ous con­struct gets US from young, at school and con­tin­ues.
    The tv and so on.
    Thank­ful­ly I will NOT allow my brain to be washed by this evil.
    Mar­cus Gar­vey, X, Dr Frances Cres­ling have washed my brain of the indoc­tri­na­tion and so This shall con­tin­ue.

  • Humanistic Revolution says:

    I am typ­ing from my fid­dly phone.
    Apolo­gies for the errors.
    One last thing racism IS a dis­eased of white indi­vid­u­als how­ev­er some are hon­est enough ( not fake lib­er­als white guilt,no tol­er­ance for such vibes)to objec­tive­ly and sub­jec­tive­ly acknowl­edge this real­i­ty.
    The Maios received com­pen­sa­tion as did the Jews, what is so dif­fer­ent about African humans?
    More humans died dur­ing the Atlantic slave trade!

  • leggomyelmo says:

    All hail Albert Ein­stein

  • Realest Nigga says:

    fux

  • Jason says:

    What White peo­ple are racist!!

    No way! Who would of thought!!!!

  • Dana L Washington says:

    Hon­est­ly, we will nev­er have an open dia­logue on race in Amer­i­ca because there is a cul­ture of denial that goes way back to the build­ing of the pyra­mid by Hotep and the dis­cov­ery that all humans come from “Lucy“who was found in Africa. The Olmec fea­tures are dis­tinct­ly African and so are the fea­tures of the pharaohs and queens of the Nile. These his­toric truths have been large­ly ignored or dis­tort­ed to make real African peo­ple think that they are of no val­ue or have no sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to civ­i­liza­tion. The oppo­site is true but not taught in Euro­pean or Amer­i­can schools or church­es. Reli­gion takes the hearts and spir­it of a peo­ple and makes their cap­tiv­i­ty seem spir­i­tu­al­ly cor­rect. In fact, scrip­ture seems to sup­port slav­ery as an hon­or­able sit­u­a­tion to find one’s self in dur­ing colo­nial Times. This is and was brain­wash­ing at its best. Notwith­stand­ing the fact that in Europe and some South Amer­i­can coun­tries they still wor­ship the Black Madon­na and Black Holy Infant who have black skin and wooly hair…We just weren’t taught our his­to­ry but were taught HIS­to­ry! It begins with us teach­ing our youth at home the facts because I doubt they will ever be taught the truth in school. We need to learn our­selves that some of the things we thought we know aren’t the truth. The truth will set you free! Just don’t rely on oth­ers to tell you the whole truth unless it ben­e­fits them

  • Watson says:

    That’s the damn dumb­est thing I’ve ever heard of. As a Black man, I’m a white suprema­cist?

    Do Not Asso­ciate Me Or Any Oth­er Peo­ple With The Moral Fail­ings Of Euro­peans. That’s SOLELY a Euro­pean trait.

    My wife and I cel­e­brat­ed our 2nd anniver­sary last week. We ate at (our favorite) Thai restau­rant. YOU believe that French or Ital­ian is “classier” than oth­ers. Myself, my fam­i­ly AND my friends know that US politi­cians will boy­cott “French” fries because they won’t run to war as eager­ly as Amer­i­ca will, but are SILENT, when French troops film them­selves SODOMIZING STARVING CHILDREN!

    GTFOH There’s noth­ing more annoy­ing than Ang­los not want­i­ng to share a dime of the prof­its from sytem­at­ic racism that’s fes­tered in this coun­try since, how old is the US? But now that SOCIAL MEDIA unearths the COLD HARD NASTY TRUTH ABOUT EUROPEANS.…

    .…you now want me.….ME? to share in your peo­ple’s immoral racism?

    With all do respect you as a human.….bitch please. Sit down.

  • Michael St Johns' says:

    Less we forget!July 4 1776.

    My African Ances­tors were brought to this Land in Chains.
    Inden­tured ser­vants were try­ing to get out of debt.
    The Natives, the first born on this land, were run­ning for their lives after serv­ing the first Thanks­giv­ing din­ner and form­ing the Orig­i­nal Home Land Secu­ri­ty.
    Fredrick Dou­glas had it right about the Fourth of July.

    Michael St.Johns’

  • Phuck_Yew says:

    They dropped the bomb on us first, over a trade war.

    They want­ed more steel to rape the Chi­nese.

    Do you even his­to­ry bro?

  • Which means... says:

    A genius who has real­ized many things proved true real­izes yet anoth­er thing.

    You dis­agree with this real­iza­tion.

    The genius, not you, is prob­a­bly right.

  • Manayorkshire says:

    Ein­stein said if he had his life again he’d be a plumber.
    Gets my vote,top man.

  • John says:

    Well, Ein­stein evi­dent­ly did­n’t know about the Chi­nese doc­trine of the “Mid­dle King­dom,” and also com­plete­ly ignored his own peo­ple’s belief in the “cho­sen” and the “goy­im.”

    And that’s just two easy exam­ples, both of which are entire­ly pred­i­cat­ed upon race.

  • Huh? says:

    So if white ppl did­n’t achieve any­thing by killing ppl from oth­er racial groups, then they WOULD’NT be racist?? You make no sense and your gen­er­al­iza­tion is a racist com­ment to boot. Con­grats, you’re an idiot and a hyp­ocrite.

  • Maxim says:

    Would these be the same white peo­ple who marched up the Nile in red jack­ets & left their bones bleach­ing in the sand to put an end to slav­ery?

  • oh boy says:

    so who else has the KKK after them, any oth­er race? no, I did­n’t think so. and who are the KKK made up of? yes, I thought so.

  • badari says:

    The slave trade was first abol­ished by King Ashoka in India. Slav­ery has­n’t real­ly been around in Asia for ages oth­er than ille­gal cas­es of slave trade

  • Maxim says:

    Has any­one men­tioned the racism of Dar­ius, march­ing out of Per­sia in 490 BC, deter­mined to wipe all Greeks off the face of the earth. Their tra­di­tion of anti-Euro­peanism con­tin­ues to this day, their imams preach­ing from the pul­pit death to all West­ern Civil­i­sa­tion.

  • Sgtoox says:

    While white ppl cer­tain­ly have a prob­lem with racism. Only peo­ple with lit­tle to no expo­sure to nations of oth­er eth­nic­i­ties would ever say it’s exclu­sive or even more promi­nent in white peo­ple. Spend some time in Asia, South Amer­i­ca, the Mid­dle East, or Africa if you’d like to be exposed to plen­ty of racism of the non-white vari­ety

  • Seanrick says:

    Any rec­om­men­da­tions as to how we solve this prob­lem? And what do you mean by ‘fan­ning the flames’?

  • Seanrick says:

    But it does seem to be that we have tak­en it to astound­ing heights.

  • Fabricio says:

    Do you know that Dar­ius was­n’t a muslin, Mohamed was not even born, and the Greeks had invade Per­sian colonies many times, don´‘t you?

  • colourless says:

    Cau­casian’s should not have a monop­oly on the word ‘white’. I have seen bet­ter exam­ples of white in north indi­ans, north chi­nese, kore­ans and japan­ese yet they are not allowed to use the word white. the use of the word white for Euro­peans and coloured for the rest of the world is racist in itself and screams of insti­tu­tion­al racism. we should remove this from all appli­ca­tion forms

    the word ‘colour­less’ is anoth­er option. see how do you like that? ok then, Cau­casian it is.

  • agatha says:

    rac­sim in west­erm coun­tries is vio­lent hatred where for­eign­ers are phys­i­cal­ly attacked and men­tal­ly abused by media. in Asia/middle east it is rarely vio­lent and the media is more focused on local cul­ture. so we can han­dle asian/ mid­dle east­ern Rac­sim a lot bet­ter than west­ern. south amer­i­ca and africa i can­not com­ment on as i have not lived there.

  • sragh avan says:

    Well well well, a genius but a racist human being … Inter­est­ing.

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.