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On the sexist treatment of Madame Curie (fellow Nobel Laureate):
The treatment to which Einstein referred included the fact that the French Academy of Sciences denied her application for a seat, possibly because of rumors that she was Jewish — or because she was having an affair with a married man, the physicist Paul Langevin.
“I am convinced that you consistently despise this rabble,” Einstein wrote, “whether it obsequiously lavishes respect on you or whether it attempts to satiate its lust for sensationalism!”
“Anyone who does not number among these reptiles,” he said of her critics, “is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages among us as you, and Langevin too, real people with whom one feels privileged to be in contact.”
Einstein concluded that “[i]f the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptiles for whom it has been fabricated.”
On the discrimination against African Americans:
“Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious,” he continued, “but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the ‘Whites’ toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion, particularly toward Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.”
Einstein then addressed the complaints of those who have had “unfavorable experiences…living side by side with Negroes” which have led them to believe “[t]hey are not our equals in intelligence, sense of responsibility, reliability.”
“I am firmly convinced that whoever believes this suffers from a fatal misconception,” he wrote. “Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man’s quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition.”
“The ancient Greeks also had slaves,” he wrote. “They were not Negroes but white men who had been taken captive in war. There could be no talk of racial differences. And yet Aristotle, one of the great Greek philosophers, declared slaves inferior beings who were justly subdued and deprived of their liberty. It is clear that he was enmeshed in a traditional prejudice from which, despite his extraordinary intellect, he could not free himself.”
The "Dead Sea Scrolls of Physics" online: Princeton Einstein Papers
#P4TC: Einstein
