Albert Einstein said that racism is a Disease of White People
The full quote comes from a speech he gave in May 1946 at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania—the first degree-granting historically Black university in the United States. Speaking to the students and faculty, he stated:
“There is a separation of colored people from white people in the United States. That separation is not a disease of colored people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it.”
He echoed a similar sentiment that same year in an essay titled The Negro Question, where he wrote that white Americans’ sense of equality was largely limited to other white people, calling systemic racism America’s “worst disease.”
Context & His Anti-Racism Work
Einstein wasn’t just dropping hot takes; he actively used his massive global celebrity to support the American Civil Rights Movement:
- Empathy Born of Experience: Having fled Nazi Germany in 1933 because he was Jewish, Einstein frequently noted that the treatment of Black Americans reminded him of how Jews were treated in Europe.
- Local Activism: When he moved to Princeton, New Jersey, he was vocal about the town’s harsh racial segregation. He walked through Black neighborhoods, offered candy to local children, and invited Black figures into his home when local hotels refused them—most notably opera star Marian Anderson.
- Prominent Allies: He developed close friendships with civil rights leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, and backed anti-lynching campaigns.
A Nuanced Historical Reality
While Einstein was undeniably a forward-thinking advocate for Black Americans in the 1930s and ’40s, history paints a complex picture of the man himself.
When his private travel diaries from the early 1920s (recorded while traveling through Asia and the Middle East) were published in 2018, they revealed xenophobic and stereotyping comments about Chinese, Sri Lankan, and Indian people. Scholars note that even someone like Einstein—who explicitly identified racial bias as a “disease” and actively fought it later in life—was not entirely immune to absorbing the prevailing prejudices of his era.