# Colored people's time

Colored People's Time (also abbreviated to CP Time or CPT) is an American expression referring to African Americans as frequently being late. It claims that African Americans can have a relaxed or indifferent view of punctuality, which leads to them being labeled as lazy or unreliable.
According to NPR's podcast Code Switch, the phrase has variations in many other languages and cultures, is often used as a light-hearted comment or joke regarding being late, and may have first been used in 1914 by The Chicago Defender newspaper.
There are differences between monochronic societies and polychronic societies (e.g., some of those found in Sub-Saharan Africa).

## In popular culture

The expression has been referenced numerous times in various types of media, including the films Friday Foster, The Best Man, Bamboozled, Undercover Brother, Let's Do It Again, House Party, BlacKkKlansman, and several television series: The Mindy Project, Prison Break, The Boondocks, The Wire, Weeds, Where My Dogs At?, Reno 911!, 30 Rock, Everybody Hates Chris, A Different World, The PJs, Bridezillas, Mad TV, Cedric the Entertainer Presents, In Living Color, Empire, F is for Family, and reality series The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Colored People's Time was used as the name of a 1960s public interest program produced by Detroit Public Television. It was also used in the title of the 1983 play, "Colored People's Time: A History Play," written by Leslie Lee, which consisted of 13 fictional vignettes of African American history, from the Civil War through Civil Rights and the Montgomery bus riots. CP Time was also a 2007 book by J. L. King.
In his 1982 book Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., author Stephen B. Oates notes that Martin Luther King Jr. and his staff operated by what they jocularly called "CPT"—Colored People's Time—"and kept appointments with cheerful disregard for punctuality".$^{:280}$ King once apologized for being late for a banquet, saying he forgot what time he was on—EST, CST, or Colored People's Time, adding that "It always takes us longer to get where we're going."$^{:328}$
On April 9, 2016, in a staged joke skit at that year's annual Inner Circle dinner, Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio said he'd been operating on "C.P. time" for his delay in endorsing Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party nominee for president. The actor Leslie Odom Jr., then starring in the Broadway show Hamilton, then replied "I don't like jokes like that, Bill," after which Clinton delivered the punch line that CPT stood for "cautious politician time." This skit was widely criticized, with The Root calling it "cringeworthy" while the conservative outlet TownHall pointed to a double standard that, "It's only racist if Republicans do it." In response, President Barack Obama, during the 2016 White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 30, jokingly apologized for being late because of "running on C.P.T." adding that this stands for "jokes white people should not make".
In February 2018, Roy Wood Jr. presented a segment on The Daily Show called "CP Time" to celebrate Black History Month by "honoring the unsung heroes of black history". It has since become a recurring segment on the show.