Emulating Einstein: An Anti-Racist Model for White People

Be more like Albert

Jeffrey Kass
Momentum
Published in
5 min readMar 16, 2021

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Artistic colorful illustration of Albert Einstein.
Image: Muhammad suryanto/Shutterstock

Albert Einstein was born in Germany on March 14, 1879, the same year tens of thousands of Black American refugees engaged in a mass flight from slave states along the Mississippi River to the hopefully better pastures of Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma. This event became known as the Exodus of 1879.

Although slavery technically ended in 1865, Black people still needed to escape the pervasive racial violence perpetrated by White supremacists in the years that followed. Southern Black people were also exhausted from the discriminatory laws known as the Black Codes, which effectively rendered Black people second-class citizens and prevented them from advancing economically. These laws included prohibiting the sale and lease of land to Black people. At the same time, private banks and businesses often increased their prices and interest rates for Black customers.

These racist laws and practices combined to create generations of struggle for Black Americans — those who remained in the South, as well as the traumatized refugees who’d fled.

These injustices persisted because White folks allowed them to. One rare exception was Albert Einstein.

Einstein’s anti-racist philosophy

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Jeffrey Kass
Momentum

A Medium Top Writer on Racism, Diversity, Education, History and Parenting | Speaker | Award-Winning Author | Latest Book: Black Batwoman V. White Jesus | Dad