I’m listening to an incredible program from Speaking of Faith entitled Einstein’s Ethics. The author and physicist James Gates Jr. is speaking about Einstein’s very early take on the utter subjugation of blacks in America. As long ago as 1946, he was writing about and speaking about the brilliance of the Americans and their concommitant hypocristy regarding race in America. It’s almost enough to make one cry.
Here is a quote from his piece called The Negro Question,:
In the United States everyone feels assured of his worth as an individual. No one humbles himself before another person or class. Even the great difference in wealth, the superior power of a few, cannot undermine this healthy self-confidence and natural respect for the dignity of one’s fellow-man.
There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins. Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious; 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.
Today, while reading a book about Ireland, I told my daughter that she is part Irish because her mother is half Irish. She asked me if I was Irish, too. I said that I was not. She then said, “You should get Irish.”