Quantcast
Channel: Karen Grigsby Bates
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 216

When It Comes To Terms Like 'Colored People's Time,' Context Matters

$
0
0
One would think we wouldn't be needing to have this conversation right about now, but apparently we do.As you've surely heard by now, this time the peg comes courtesy of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose appearance in a comedy skit during a black-tie dinner over the weekend culminated with a "surprise" onstage visit from Hillary Clinton and Hizzoner's use of the phrase "C.P. Time."For people unfamiliar with it, that's Colored People's Time — usually abbreviated, in the black communities I've lived in, to C.P.T. — and it means clock-challenged. It's often used by colored peoples to describe habitually tardiness. "Dinner's at 7, but you know they run on C.P.T., so I told them it was 5:30, so they actually get there by 7."Black people use the expression all the time. And people of other ethnicities have told me they have similar expressions — Latinos, Italians, Slavs — but the point is that when they use the term, they're talking about themselves. Even though de Blasio has an African

Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 216

Trending Articles