Why Are Black People Hotter than White People?

I didn’t make the rules. I see the facts. I report the facts. That’s all. And the fact is Black people are hotter than White people. It’s in the data and indisputable.

Before you burst into a white-hot rage, before you rush to call me a “reverse racist” or whatever other lackluster insult leaps first to your mind, before you barrage me with your list of bombshells exemplifying Eurocentric beauty standards, let me just say this: Idris Elba. Lupita Nyongo’o. Michael B. Jordan. Beyonce. Me.

What do all these people have in common?

They’re all beautiful. They’re all Black.

I’m teasing, of course, so don’t feel like you need to reach into your card deck of celebrity crushes to play a hand of equally attractive White people to counter the Black babes I threw out. I’m not trying to play some weird game of racial Yu-Gi-Oh. Not that I’m worried I’d lose, I’d definitely win. I just don’t want to battle about beauty and talk about why Black people are more attractive.

To defend myself in that fight, I’d have to wield as my arms arguments about how physical and sexual selection during slavery skewed the gene pool of Africans in America; I’d have to talk about how enslaved Africans that were more physically fit were more likely to survive the torture of the trans-Atlantic crossing and the pain of plantation life; I’d have to talk about how the more fit they were, the more likely they were to be bred like colts and cattle; I’d also have to talk about how enslaved Africans that were more attractive were more likely to be raped by the White men who owned them.

I’d rather not dwell on that haunting history more than I already have.

You may be wondering then, if I don’t want to talk about beauty, then why the hell write an article headlined “Why are Black People Hotter than White People”?

Here’s a semi-Socratic answer: Did you consider that I meant the headline literally? Did you consider that I meant to explore why Black people and Black neighborhoods are literally hotter – warmer, if you prefer – than White people and White neighborhoods?

That, dear Reader, is the undeniable reality of urban design. Neighborhoods with more Black people are measurably hotter. And it’s not because shawty fire burnin’ on the dance floor. Oh no no. Decades of discriminatory development have left Black neighborhoods across America with fewer trees, fewer parks, and more asphalt than White neighborhoods in the same city, which combine to raise the heat to a dangerous degree.

Why Do Black Communities Have Fewer Trees?

This has little to do with our actions today or even in recent years. The contours that constrain our cities were sculpted during the 1930s. At that time, the federal government was trying to lift the economy out of the Depression with all manner of mechanisms, and homeownership was a key point of leverage in the effort.

To get more people into homes, the government passed the Home Owners’ Loan Act. Just like the rest of the New Deal, the loan act was infected by the unique and ever-present strain of American racism. One symptom of the loan act’s infection was the codification of racial segregation. The loan act led to the formation of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), which created the framework that informed discriminatory development decisions for the remainder of the twentieth century.

The HOLC defined which neighborhoods were desirable or undesirable for loans. They mapped cities and, almost entirely based on race, assigned letter grades from A through D to different communities with associated color-coding. This process resulted in the infamous redlined maps so many of us are familiar with.

Redlined map of Los Angeles produced by the HOLC
Source: U. of Richmond Mapping Inequality Project

These maps kept loans out of majority-Black neighborhoods, and race-restrictive resale agreements prevented Black folks from buying homes in White neighborhoods. Redlining placed a brick wall – in some cases, literally – between Black families and homeownerships. This wall kept Black neighborhoods from accessing the privileges that come with the wealth associated with homeownership.

Lack of wealth means a lack of security, a lack of leisure time, and a lack of leverage to push back against policy decisions made by city, county, and state officials. Lack of wealth also meant that non-residential developers could buy land in and around Black neighborhoods on the cheap because it was still considered “undesirable,” even after the 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed home loan discrimination.

These factors created communities that were unhealthy and dangerous to live in. The government paved highways through the heart of Black neighborhoods. Refineries, power plants, and toxic waste sites came to form rings around formerly redlined regions. Concrete-walled warehouses, large building complexes, and asphalt lots filled in any undeveloped lands within once-redlined areas, and dilapidated lands with a few tufts of grass and a handful of pathetic trees were what passed for parks.

Unlike White neighborhoods with access to wealth, Black communities couldn’t fight back against the development decisions made that polluted the air, land, and water all while turning up the heat. They lacked the tools and resources to counteract these predatory practices. While, in recent years, Black people have begun to amass moderate political power to push for change, the decisions made over decades past are not quickly or easily reversed. Even with intentional effort, Black neighborhoods will likely face toxic conditions for years to come.

In the age of global warming, one of the most concerning of these conditions is the relative lack of trees, parks, and other green spaces in Black communities compared to White ones. This is a well-researched trend with profound consequences.

Why Do Trees Matter?

Trees and green spaces are for more than just views and lawns to lounge in. They keep humans healthy. Trees release chemicals that can boost immune systems. They clean up air pollution. Parks lower heart rate and blood pressure and improve mental health. Trees do all that for us and ask nothing in return.

But when it comes to city living, there’s one benefit that’s more important than all the others: Trees act as the air conditioning of the natural world.

How?

The same way your body keeps you cool. They sweat. Well, technically, they transpire.

Plants and trees are famous for producing the oxygen we need to survive, but that’s not all they exhale. They let off water too. And just like the sweat that evaporates from your skin and extracts heat along with it, when plants release water, it cools them down. The hotter it gets, the more they transpire to keep their leaves cool, aiming for around 68°F – the ideal temperature for photosynthesis.

As plants cool themselves off, they cool the air around them too. In the high heat of summer, the temperature difference between areas with and without trees can be well over 20°F. This has huge consequences for cities and communities.

The more trees and parks a neighborhood has the cooler it will be.

With redlining replacing green spaces in Black neighborhoods with concrete and asphalt – two substances known to soak up heat – Black communities have been turned into the worst sort of sauna. This practice has turned up the thermostat on Black communities and made them 5 to 15°F hotter on average than White neighborhoods in the same city.

If you gone on a walk or been stuck in an unconditioned space on a hot day, you know how debilitating high temperatures can be. In fact, despite the horrifying imagery of hurricanes, despite the unstoppable force of floods, heatwaves kill and hospitalize more people every year than any other category of catastrophe. Outside of extreme weather, heat itself becomes the leading cause of hospitalization and death during the summer. Research has even shown that every 1°C increase (~2°F) during a heatwave raises the chance of death by 3.5%. That means, in a place like Portland, Oregon where Black communities are on average 7.6°C (~15°F) hotter than White neighborhoods, Black people are over 25% more likely to die during a heat wave.

As climate change escalates and unprecedented temperatures scorch the world to lethal effect, we must seek ways to cool our cities with the focus placed on Black communities that have been stripped of trees and green spaces.

How Can We Cool Communities Down?

The most obvious approach is to do the opposite of what warmed communities up in the first place: replace asphalt and concrete with grass and trees.

However, the actual answer would seem to be more complicated. After all, we can’t tear up roads and tear down buildings at our discretion – as much as we might wish we could. We have to account for what exists, where it is, and how we can work with it.

In 2019, researchers at Portland State University studied different approaches for cooling down Portland neighborhoods and found that some techniques work better than others. The context of a community shapes how effective a specific strategy can be.

For instance, planting trees might work great in neighborhoods with low canopy cover and ample undeveloped area, but it doesn’t work well in places without any space for planting – unless sidewalks or roadways were replaced with planters, an approach unassessed by the researchers.

In areas that all but lack space for tree planting, the PSU team found that one of the most effective solutions for cooling is to paint roadways and rooftops white to reflect sunlight and avoid it being absorbed as heat. That may have other complications, but it’s an easy-to-implement, low-tech strategy that’s effective immediately as opposed to tree plantings which can take years to get the full effects as they grow and mature. Unsurprisingly, the most effective solution was a combination of road and rooftop whitening and tree planting.

Regardless, the authors of the study were clear, solutions need to be place specific, and their results are only applicable to Portland. Urban planners and environmental justice advocates have to consider the context of a community to understand what solutions will best keep it cool.

Of course, trees and parks have benefits that extend well beyond the natural air conditioning they provide. All tallied up, the benefits of green spaces are almost immeasurable.

So, while it might not completely cure the disparities resulting from decades of discriminatory development, cities should prioritize planting trees and expanding green spaces in Black neighborhoods. Maybe with trees to cool them down, Black people won’t be quite so much hotter than White people. Though, Beyonce’s Renaissance album begs to differ.