“If time had a race, it would be white.”
A gender studies professor discussed the racial implications of time during an NPR interview last week, arguing that “if time had a race, it would be white” and that “White people own time.”
Speaking to host Guy Raz for the TED Radio Hour episode “Confronting Racism,” Brittney Cooper, associated professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers, expounded on her theory regarding the racial politics of time. Cooper’s conversation with Raz was centered largely around a 2017 TED talk she gave on the topic.
During her TED talk, Cooper said that “White people own time,” citing as evidence the black community’s use of the phrase “colored-people time,” a long-standing joke about black people’s purported “perpetual lateness.” She even suggested that her own penchant for punctuality stemmed from her mother’s reaction to racism.
“I personally am a stickler for time. It’s almost as if my mother, when I was growing up, said, ‘we will not be those black people.’ So we typically arrive to events 30 minutes early,” Cooper said, before declaring, “if time had a race, it would be white.”
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