Colored People’s Time

Credit: Bruno 2001

Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, the mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and acclaimed teacher, activist and preacher of the the 20th century, had a few things to say about time. Dr. Benjamin E. Mays appreciated the importance of using one’s time productively. If he were alive today, I’m sure that Dr. Mays would outwardly reject the idea of CPT or “Colored People’s Time”. He would ignite the fire within those inside and outside of the African-American community, and challenge them not to allow the thief of time to steal their precious seconds, minutes, and hours away.

Throughout his life, Dr. Mays left incredible insight on the importance of young people being concerned not with an unfulfilled goal, but rather, having no goal to fulfill. He would say the failure is not in seeing our dreams not come true, but rather, the failure lives in not dreaming at all. A beautiful poem that Dr. Mays wrote says:

I have only just a minute, Only sixty seconds in it.

Forced upon me, can’t refuse it, Didn’t seek it, Didn’t choose it.

But, it is up to me to use it. I must suffer if I lose it. Give account if I abuse it,

Just a tiny little minute— But eternity is in it.

In jest, African-Americans have humorously labeled their propensity for lateness as Colored People’s Time. Colored People’s Time is arriving a half hour to three hours late for an expected engagement, party, or meeting. Amongst themselves, CPT is understood, unchallenged, and expected. But when does arriving late for a movie, a party, or a coffee date morph into being late to arrive at destiny, one’s goals, or one’s responsibilities? Theories identify chronic lateness as an indicator of passive-aggressiveness. Being passive-aggressive is to to indirectly express frustration, anger, and rage without taking violent or direct means to do so. So, as “colored people” have been forced to assimilate into a Western system that was overtly aggressive to them in the first place, “colored people” have found a convenient and non-confrontational way of combating oppression: showing up late to the oppressor. It’s actually quite clever.

Although quite effective in provoking one’s awaiting company, chronic lateness or “colored” lateness is actually hurting them too. Some psychologists would use the same analogy to describe chronically late people as they would to describe a chronically angry person. “It’s like swallowing poison but hoping that someone else dies.”

I look around the black community and I see that our people have been dealt a dirty deck with respect to time. By the time that black authors, playwrights, and scientists were writing masterpieces and making breakthroughs, their white counterparts had already overtaken these positions in science, medicine, literature and arts. We arrived a day late and a dollar short and we’re doing the same in present day only now, we laugh while we do it. Why?

Elizabeth Bishop taught us in her beautiful poem One Art, we should not lose the fluster of an hour badly spent. As a black woman, my heart breaks when I see young and intelligent black men falling through the cracks of time and not at all flustered by lifetimes of hours poorly spent. Plenty of people have come in contact with black men who still wear fitted hats, baggy jeans, over sized T’s, and Timberland boots well past their mid and late teens. (It’s so 1995 but adorned well into the 21st century.) What about spending a few extra dollars on cuff links, monogrammed cuffs, tailored suits and loafers? If the end goal is to “get a girl”, you’ll get them like bees to honey in the latter get up.

It said that the outfit doesn’t make the man, but the man makes the outfit. My question is, what grown man doesn’t walk around in nice button up shirts, dress slacks that fit, and perhaps a stylish cap to complete the look? My theory is that a percentage of the black male community suffers from Lost Boy Syndrome. Like Peter Pan, they never want to grow up. With role models like rap stars, DJ’s, and player-pimps, what else could these young and older black men aspire to? Why is that black men still believe they can wait until tomorrow to do things? Although the insular community may operate on CPT, the rest of the world has never and will never run on Colored People’s Time.

In reflection of the wise words of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, I challenge all black men, women, young and older folks to set aside Colored People’s Time during this Black History Month Series. Get on time this time. How many hours or days rather, have we as individuals lost because we were a half an hour late here, twenty minutes late there, and forty minutes there? What could we have done in these minutes that add up to hours? There’s but sixty seconds in it, but eternity is in it.

Other Posts by Eryn on Black History Month:

Black History’s Leading Literary Lady

Making a Madam

Burning Black Wall Street

The Black Panther Party For Self Defense

In the name of Science…

Intelligence of Interference? COINTELPRO and the Black Panther Party

“How they sold Marcus Garvey for rice”-LH

Trippin on X

Yes you’re a woman…just a different kind

Justin Bua and Urban Realism

And then there was hip hop

Vote to Discontinue Black History Month

So Soulful

Black and Gay? No Way!