I was driving my kids to school just a couple weeks before Spring Break last year. We were in that awful stretch between Christmas Break and Spring Break when school kids are expected to learn for weeks on end without any major holiday vacation to break up the monotony. Consequently, my kids were already a little on edge that morning – the day after we had "sprung forward" for Daylight Savings Time.
I pulled out of the garage into the darkness and my son exploded. "Why do we have to go so early?" he screeched, pointing to the darkness around us. "We never go this early." I tried a couple times to explain to him that we were still technically going at the same time, just the earth was an hour earlier in its rotation.
His response was unequivocal as he threw his hands up in 9-year-old disgust: "That just doesn't make any sense!"
No son, it really doesn't, I'm forced to admit. Every spring, I hate having to lose an hour of sleep, I do not care for driving past kids in the dark standing at the ends of their driveways or at bus stops. And in the fall, I hate that it feels like 9 pm when it's only 5:00.
Moreover, one of my favorite things to do is to add new lights and features to our pool in the backyard. I recently installed LED lights around the entire edge of the pool line, as well as a couple colored spotlights behind water features. This, coupled with the normal landscape lighting I set up back there gives the whole backyard a really cool "after dark" ambience. And no one ever sees it. Why? Because in the summer it doesn't get dark until 10 pm, long past the departure time for most social guests.
I understand that most people are used to it, but for years I was spoiled by being from Indiana. Until sometime this last decade, Indiana joined with Arizona as the only two states in the union that told the Daylight Savings Time masterminds to shove it. Half of the football season, afternoon NFL games would start at 1 pm, during the other half of the season, they would start at noon.
That too was annoying because it always left a rational person asking the same question: why does it have to be so difficult? Why can't we just set the clock and let it go?
For decades, such protestations of the peasantry fell on the deaf ears of those in charge. The ones who much preferred listening to the voices of influential economic interests, or those from the powerful corporate and agricultural lobbies.
It seemed to many of us a lost cause. That is until scrolling my social feeds a few days ago, I happened across what could be the golden ticket.
Yes, you read that correctly. Daylight Savings Time is now racist. Fox News summarized the piece:
CNN Health reporter Jacqueline Howard, argued that Daylight Savings Time often disrupts sleep, throws off people's circadian rhythms and can contribute to general health problems.
And since people of color have a higher number of health problems, this means observing Daylight Savings Time is more dangerous for them.
Is the whole thing incredibly stupid? Of course. It's just the latest in a long litany of finding racism where it doesn't exist and thus watering down the potency of the charge and the revulsion we should have towards true and legitimate racism. Still, after many futile years of fighting this "everything is racist" nonsense as it overtakes our cultural sensibilities, maybe a better strategy is in order?
Maybe one of those, "If you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em" approaches is wiser? Maybe hijacking or co-opting the racial justice movement in order to wield it as a weapon to advance my own anti-Daylight Savings Time demands is an idea whose moment has come?
From where I sit, I declare it worth a shot. So, Daylight Savings proponents, quit filling our ears with all your market-based reasons for the scam, and answer this simple question: why do you have to be so racist?
Checkmate.
