College prof. says inner-cities have higher temperatures because of racism

Do you know why inner cities are hot? Because they have fewer trees. Do you know why they have fewer trees? Racism. So says Christopher Schell, Assistant Professor at the University Of Washington, Tacoma, whose specialty is urban ecology.

Schell (and seven co-authors) published a paper that looked at the correlation between rising temperatures and inner-city minority neighborhoods. “Where the buildings are, where the impervious surfaces were essentially that hardcover, right, the concrete, where the trees are, that’s all influenced by the policies that say where stuff is going to be and those policies themselves are racist,” Schell said.

The paper claimed that “our contemporary fight for civil rights in the wake of unjust murders and continued racial oppression of Black and Indigenous communities stresses the need to interrogate and abolish systemic racism.” Moreover, it claims that “insidious white supremacist structures that perpetuate racism throughout society compromise both public and environmental health, solidifying the need to radically dismantle systems of racial and economic oppression.”