A Rutgers Professor Says That Time Has a Race

Brittney Cooper is an associated professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers who gave a TED talk and an interview with NPR with some very provocative insights into a topic that has always fascinated me, that has always struck me as not specifically related to Women, or Gender, or Africana, but to everyone and everything: Time. Well, now I stand corrected.

Q: Can you explain what you mean that time has a race?

COOPER: Yes. So when I say time has a race, I’m saying that the way that we position ourselves in relationship to time comes out of histories of European and Western thought. And a lot of the way that we talk about time really finds its roots in the Industrial Revolution. So prior to that, we would talk about time as merely passing the time. After the Industrial Revolution, suddenly, we begin to talk about time as spending time. It becomes something that is tethered to monetary value. So when we think about hourly wage, we now talk about time in terms of wasting time or spending time. And that’s a really different understanding of time than, you know, like seasonal time or time that is sort of merely passing. …

Time has a history, and so do black people. But we treat time as though it is timeless, as though it has always been this way, as though it doesn’t have a political history bound up with the plunder of indigenous lands, the genocide of indigenous people and the stealing of Africans from their homeland. When white, male European philosophers first thought to conceptualize time and history, one famously declared, Africa is no historical part of the world. He was, essentially, saying that Africans were people outside of history who had had no impact on time or the march of progress. …

[I]t reminds me of the ways that past and presents and futures seemingly coexist for African-American folks. And so in that way, time doesn’t feel linear. It feels like the past, you know, past narratives of race that are rooted in violence and rooted in a lack of freedom. They feel like they can become our reality again at any moment.

I’m fascinated. I’ve heard a lot of different theories of time, but never this one. I’ve read where time is a 4th dimension we’re traveling through. Then the opposite; that in fact all things exist simultaneously and time is merely a human construct our primitive brains create to process the fact that cavemen, Socrates, Mozart, your great grandparents and Pew Die Pie are all alive. We’ve all seen “True Detective” where Matthew McConaughy said “Time is a flat circle.” Einstein theorized that time is relative and the faster you travel, the more it slows down. And so on.

But I have to admit, this idea that because one old dead racist Eurotrash said African history doesn’t count (which had to have been pre-Darwin, since we know all human life came from there) that time is different for whites than it is for blacks is a new one on me. And I don’t pretend to be as smart as a college professor, so I’ll just go along. But it leaves me with so many questions:

–Is this just strictly a white/black thing? I’m guessing whoever said that thing about Africa was no fan of other lands either. So is time linear for Asians? Samoans? Inuits? I’m guessing life was no picnic for Central Americans once the Euros showed up. Do they have separate pasts, presents and futures, or is it still the 1500s there?

–Pink Floyd (all-white band) sang “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way. The time is gone.” But Marvin Gaye (black) sang “Jesus taught us time heals all wounds.” How does the professor reconcile those two philosophies?

–Now that I think of it, Boy George was gender fluid and he sang “Time is a like a clock in my heart.” What do we make of that?

–Everyone is saying that MLB is having a hard time attracting African American players, but the sports that have clocks don’t. This seems incongruous to me.

–After Marty McFly went back in time and changed reality, Biff Tannen’s life sucked and Goldie Wilson became mayor. If time is strictly a white thing, please explain.

–What about the fact that Russell Wilson can buy time in the pocket, but Andy Reid is terrible at managing the clock?

I could go on, but it might seem like I’m arguing, when I’m not. I’m just interested in learning all our existence. And if life has taught me anything it’s that academics are smart and have all the answers. Even when I can’t understand the question.