NYC Health Officials Worried About “Structural Racism” Influencing Heat Stress. No, This Is Not Satire.

Story time: I grew up in the South, but my family is from the North. Summertime in Georgia was especially interesting because none of my elders grew up playing on anything except concrete playgrounds. They would lock me and my siblings outside for hours at a time and force us to play in the woods “as kids were supposed to do,” while they watched from inside, safely hidden from pollen and bugs. I’m not saying they were trying to kill me, but it turns out I’m allergic to trees and grass, so they were kinda trying to kill me. Culturally, they wanted me to do things they never did, and look at me now, a black conservative! HAHAHA! Grandma is very disappointed.

While encouraging me to do new things, there were certain things that just never changed in the house. They never used the dishwasher, and they never turned on the air conditioner. EVER.

Do you know how hot it gets in an upstairs bedroom in the middle of a Georgia summer with no AC? Sahara hot. I would sweat standing still. I would lie down on the kitchen linoleum and hope for it to bring down my internal body temperature. I would get in trouble for standing in front of the freezer with the door open. My cousins who visited for summer said they felt like they were in actual hell, and eventually they stopped visiting during summer breaks. No offense taken, I completely understood.

My mother is now in her mid-sixties and she wears a jacket in my home where we keep it a nice sixty-eight degrees year round. Granted, my husband is from actual Russia and likes it to stay cold, but no normal person who isn’t sick or in prison should sweat while sleeping, so we all like to keep the house cool. My mother uses the air conditioner in her own house now, but the thermostat is set at about 80– basically just short of a heatstroke. She STILL doesn’t use the dishwasher, and she doesn’t understand why we do. I don’t know why she trusts my teenaged kids to wash dishes by hand and not give everyone E. coli, but here we are.

When I ask her why she was so stubborn about the air growing up, she has three main points: first, her parents didn’t allow the air to be on, so she grew used to not using it. Second, a lot of her homes in the North didn’t even have central air, so it simply wasn’t a thought. Third, when it finally became available for use, it was considered an unnecessary expense because you’d already proven you could live without it.

You know what she didn’t mention? Racism.

So color me tickled when the New York State Department of Health and Mental Hygiene sent a heat advisory warning to colleagues saying that “structural racism and the resulting social and economic inequities increase the risk of heat stress for Black New Yorkers.”

The official press release for the public does not mention structural racism or anything of the sort. But if it’s such a valid concern that is has to be shared internally, maybe the rest of the community should know to assess their heat stroke risk according to race instead of according to whether or not they own an air conditioner and are willing to use it? Like, if you know the key to longevity, don’t hide it, my good man!

I don’t mean to ask ridiculous questions here and maybe I’m talking racism, but I wonder if they’ve done any studies on how many of these black people who die from heatstroke are elderly and living alone without help. I don’t know if it’s anti-Science or whatever, but maybe we should ask who is affected and where their relatives and neighbors are when they need them. . .

That said, extremely high heat and humidity are hitting New York this week, so if you have any friends or family members there, please check on them. Encourage them to use AC if they have it and stay hydrated, and check in regularly. In extreme cases, encourage them to vacate their home if they live on upper floors with little to no circulation. We wouldn’t want racism to get them!