Regardless of cause, it does seem that Black men in Manhattan of a certain age are avoided more by pedestrians as measured by distance than White men in Manhattan of a certain age. That sucks.

Still a few issues:

First, they clearly push the "Racial avoidance hypothesis" but Figure S21 seemed to bolster the "Pedestrian outgroup salience hypothesis" over the "Racial avoidance hypothesis" since black people didn't seem to avoid other black people. The author just seemed to brush off this hypothesis as plausible but not having enough evidence to support it while pushing the favoured racial avoidance hypothesis. Yet how can he know if his hypothesis is correct without ruling out the pedestrian outgroup hypothesis or knowing if perhaps both hypothesis are correct and contributing to the effect seen?

Second, this entire quote:

>Pedestrians on our selected Manhattan street corners are likely to be wealthier, better educated, and more politically Left-leaning than the average American. These traits may, on the whole, make subjects less prone to racial avoidance.

This is directly contradicted by figure S19, which found that people gave a wider berth to black people in the wealthier upper east-side neighbourhood than the poorer midtown neighbourhood. I also should point out the bias of the author, a wealthy educated man, talking shit about how poorer less educated populations (say - black people) may be more racially avoidant.

Third, this entire quote:

>One alternative interpretation of our findings is that pedestrians are “giving people space” rather than avoiding them. We reject this interpretation, and point to the literature on proxemics, which focuses on how people use space during social interactions, and demonstrates physical avoidance of stigmatized groups in a variety of contexts, linking patterns of avoidance to implicit measures of prejudice

Anyway this is based on doi: 10.1007/7854_2015_431. It mentions a study where it's specifically referring to response latency as the "implicit measure of prejudice" correlated to less eye contact, more blinking, more distancing from interviewers, more distancing from virtual moroccans, and more shooting of virtual black people.

I'm confused as to on what grounds this hypothesis was rejected. Even if you establish that the people who were distancing themselves from black's were indeed prejudiced against blacks, that doesn't prove that they're not motivated by giving them more space. Differential treatment based on race is inherently prejudicial to begin with, so this entire mode of analysis makes no sense. On top of how nonsensical this entire analysis is, it's very questionable what the linked study actually links patterns of avoidance to valid "implicit measures of prejudice", most research on implicit prejudice is very controversial.

Fourth, S5.5.2 found that females both stayed further from black confederates AND confederates in general. However since the study DIDN'T examine how far men would stay away from women confederates, we can't say if it's because they're men or because they're a different gender. Now we didn't establish this, so we shouldn't jump to any conclusions, but imagine if we just followed the lead of the authors here and jumped to the conclusion this was gender bias and said:

>Avoidance experienced by MALE individuals, day in and day out, likely imposes a psychological toll... ...eroding mental and physical health. The very public, widespread, and chronic occurrence of pedestrian MALE avoidance may have spillover effects that influence others’ behavior in subtle but destructive ways. For example, law enforcement – even if trained to recognize their own implicit biases – may implicitly or explicitly detect bystander behavior and overestimate the level of threat posed by MALE Americans in ambiguous situations.

Oddly the authors didn't opt to draw this conclusion nor give any explanation as to why we shouldn't! They found a racial bias and a gender bias, piled on empathy for the former, and just totally omitted the latter, which itself reflects bias. This is beyond the prejudicial attitude that poor uneducated conservatives might be worse (but not better) than Manhattanites.