The "Sleep Gap": Washington Post Bemoans White People Getting a Good Night's Rest is Racist

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Every disparity between the races is your fault, white America. The misery black people uniquely create in communities from sea to shining sea is entirely the fault of white people and unrelenting, oppressive white privilege, especially in neighborhoods or cities where hardly a white face is seen. 

Naturally, even white people dream in unearned supremacy. [Study finds connection between race and sleep, Washington Post, 6-19-2018]

On May 8, campus police officers at Yale University responded to a call from a white graduate student about a black graduate student, whom she said was unknown to her and sleeping in the common room. For many, the incident was further evidence that African Americans are targets of harassment even in communities that are ostensibly their own, but the interaction is also a window into another, less-publicized disparity: It’s likely that, over the course of their lifetimes, white students have slept hundreds of hours more than black students. 

White privilege in its most sinister form: a good night's rest, truly systemic racism against people of color

According to a forthcoming paper by Tiffany Yip, a psychology professor at Fordham University, the sleep gap between white and nonwhite students begins with children as young as 2 years old — and it grows from there. What starts as a 15 minutes-a-day sleep deficit in childhood eventually becomes almost an hour a night in adulthood. 

But it isn’t just a difference of time. According to a study conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, African Americans are more likely than Caucasians to have insomnia, sleep apnea and daytime sleepiness. In addition, they spend 15 percent of their night in deep sleep (considered the most restorative phase), compared with Caucasians’ 20 percent. 

Lauren Hale, professor of family, population and preventive medicine at Stony Brook University, calls the sleep gap "a matter of social justice" and identifies two other significant predictors in addition to race: level of education (those without a high school diploma are more likely to have sleep disorders) and neighborhood context (city dwellers typically sleep less than those outside the urban core). Hale said of her findings in a 2013 TEDx Talk, "If the very people who are the most socially disadvantaged and most need that extra boost to function better during their days wake up the least prepared, then they are at a disadvantage throughout every aspect of their day." 

Of course, race is also intertwined with education levels, Zip code and other factors that impede a restful night’s sleep, such as crowding and cigarette smoking in the home and living in a higher-crime neighborhood. But, Yip says, “there are still independent effects of race that go above and beyond socioeconomic effects.”

No justice, no sleep?

Even when dreaming, white people are exercising oppression and haunting the dreams of blacks.

The purported "Sleep Gap" being dubiously peddled is just another attempt to guilt white people into sacrificing more and more to uplift blacks, with whites having undeservedly earned hundreds of hours  of more sleep than tired, ornery blacks.

Even when we sleep, white people can't escape their unearned privilege.