Particularly for ADOS, but no doubt for many Black Americans, the change in regional climate patterns exacerbates the precarities stemming from public policies historically aimed at protecting white property values at the expense of the Black community. Indeed, efforts to shore up those values necessarily entailed making Black communities a site of neglect and ruin. And now, having been intentionally placed in those inferior living environments, Black Americans are being made to suffer the attendant climate-related hazards in a pronounced way.
Describing what researchers call the ‘heat island effect’—a phenomenon in which tree-scarce, asphalt, and concrete-rich areas more readily absorb the sun’s energy and consequently experience more significant temperature rise—the Washington Post reported that “Blacks saw the highest urban heat exposure increase at 3.12° Celsius.”¹ By comparison, Hispanics experience an increase of 2.70° Celsius, and the average heat island effect in majority-white neighborhoods (at +1.47° Celsius) registers at less than half that of majority-Black neighborhoods.² In terms of how this phenomenon translates to a racialized morbidity rate, Black Americans are 2.5 x’s more likely to die from heat-related causes than whites.³
This is but one ramification of many that directly reflect how the legacy of anti-Blackness in America has not only predisposed the Black population to become the principal victims of climate-related harms, but also how ADOS are the only group for whom this arrangement is tied to the historic betrayal of the federal government to pay reparations and protect the former slaves during Reconstruction.
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