Einstein's "Racism"

Looking at the news this morning, I noticed an article accusing Einstein of racism because of some observations he made in his diary about his travels in Asia.  If, as it seems reasonable to guess, the comments mentioned in the article are the harshest things he wrote, the accusations are false. If one were to consider racism in its literal sense as a  belief that members of some groups are intrinsically superior or inferior because of their membership in the group, the accusations would be manifestly absurdly false.  So  one may assume the accusers are using the term in the popular loose sense of any manifestation of racial bigotry or prejudice.  There one should remember that just as truth is a  defense against charges of libel,  it is a defense against charges of bigotry or prejudice. If someone says something about a group of people that is true, he may be motivated by bigotry or prejudice in doing so, but anyone accusing him of it should bear the burden of proving it on the basis of something beyond the assertion itself. 

Einstein wrote that Chinese peasants behaved in a docile manner after observing them behaving docilely.  He noted that the Chinese are a fecund people, a fact attested to by China’s  being then and now the most populous nation on the planet.  He concluded it would  be dreary if the Chinese culture of that time supplanted all others.  Few if any of those attacking him would find it otherwise. He said the peasants of Ceylon were challenged in terms of hygiene and able to get by in their climate with little effort after seeing them being dirty and getting by with little effort. The comments quoted about the Japanese were laudatory or neutral. 

So the stuff  I’ve read contains nothing to indicate Einstein was a bigot,  but the reactions to it may give support to the notion that a good many journalists and twitter-ites are morons.