The recent publication of Einstein's travel diaries reveal some pretty racist statements about various Asian peoples, especially the Chinese, yet the Japanese get let off the hook somewhat. Why? How common was it for someone to approve of the Japanese on one hand but despise the Chinese on another?

What excerpts I have seen show that Einstein thought the Chinese looked dirty and chaotic and numerous, whereas he thought the Japanese looked funny (the style of makeup of the women in particular). His visions of China were of large groups of people in poverty; his visions of Japan were different. Given the different demographics of the two countries in the 1920s, someone who actually went to both could certainly see them as different.

I think that reading too much into a few private diary remarks (from a six month period in the 1920s) is an error of sorts — we don't have to try and make some big theory out of this. Most of his reactions to the Chinese (and several other places) seem to have been based on seeing mass poverty. Let's be honest: poverty does frequently cause people to appear chaotic, dirty, and stupid. It's the poverty that does it, not the people. Whether Einstein understood that or not isn't clear, but his track record on racial issues and civil rights is actually pretty good over the course of his life. I don't think one set of private thoughts on a travelogue really change that.

I have found the recent news coverage of this exceedingly ahistorical, a "gotcha" moment meant to show the "hypocrisy" of his life-long dedication to civil rights, his fights against despotism and systemic racism, and so on. Beware of buying that either/or narrative; it is juvenile in any case, certainly in looking at historical figures. Einstein was no saint (no one is, but Einstein in particular has some ugly skeletons in his closet regarding women and family), but this is a moment that is more about 2018 than it is about Einstein.