CNN has claimed in a new report that Daylight Saving Time (DST) is “racist” because disproportionately impacts minority communities.
In the article, CNN health reporter Jacqueline Howard argues that Daylight Saving Time is part of America’s supposed “structural racism.”
Howard insists that the practice of adjusting the clocks biannually is evidence of systemic racism in the United States as, she claims, it has a “disproportionate impact in communities of color.”
However, countries all around the world advance their clocks during warmer months so that darkness falls at a later clock time and have done so for over 200 years, way before most minority communities in the U.S. were even formed.
The article is titled: “Daylight Saving Time sheds light on lack of sleep’s disproportionate impact in communities of color.”
“As the United States rolled back the clocks one hour this month to observe the end of Daylight Saving Time, many people got a bit more sleep than usual – but some not as much as others,” the article begins.
“Growing evidence shows that lack of sleep and sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea, remain more prevalent in black, Asian, and Hispanic or Latino communities, and these inequities can have long-term detrimental implications for physical health, even raising the risk of certain chronic diseases,” Howard contends.
Howard writes that “some sleep researchers worry about the potential effects that continuing to change the standard time twice each year may have on sleep health inequities.”
Howard includes a quote from Chandra Jackson – a researcher and epidemiologist with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
“Poor sleep is associated with a host of poor health outcomes, including obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers, including of the breast and colon,” said Jackson – who has been studying racial and ethnic disparities in sleep.
“Many of these health outcomes are more prevalent in the black population.”
Howard continues by alleging that “people of color appear to disproportionately experience” inequities in sleep health compared to white people.
Without citing a source or providing any evidence, Howard declares that people of color suffer sleep inequalities because it’s “believed to be largely due to social systems in the United States.”
The article claims that “many social and environmental determinants of health,” such as living conditions and work schedules that are not conducive to a quality night’s sleep, can be caused by “historical and persistent forms of structural racism.”
Jackson believes that the inequality of health stems from the “totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, wages, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice.”
Jackson then references the 2020 shooting deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd’s grandniece because they were shot when they were asleep.
Jackson alleges that America’s “systems of structural racism” can “cultivate conditions that make such incidents more likely to happen in black communities.”
“More research on the causes of disparities in sleep is needed,” Jackson admits.
“Essentially anything that produces physical and psychological stress is a threat to sleep health, and these stressors tend to be more prevalent in black communities.”
Jackson alleges, “It is believed that discriminatory policies and practices across sectors of society create the physical and social conditions that make it more difficult for black families to get optimal sleep and grow up healthy.”
