Our Clocks Are Racist

How America steals time from Black people

4 min read

1 hour ago

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We humans take time for granted.

Time with our loved ones.
Time left to save for the future.
Time while our kids are small and the world still feels new.
Time to meet our goals before life closes in.

But there’s another time problem we rarely acknowledge.

The quiet, constant theft of time from Black people.

Black Americans and other marginalized groups lose staggering amounts of time every year. Time waiting, time recovering from stress, time navigating broken systems designed to exhaust them, time proving eligibility for things the privileged receive automatically.

This theft shows up everywhere once you take a close look.

In emergency rooms, where Black patients wait dramatically longer to be seen. A 2022 JAMA study found that Black patients wait an average of 35% longer in ERs nationwide compared to white patients, even when presenting with the same medical conditions.

In some metropolitan areas, that gap becomes an extra 60 to 80 minutes spent waiting for care simply because of the hospital they live near and the neighborhood they come from.