Crossing the Street

[Yazata]

From that article:

The victims are disproportionately children, seniors and people of color, according to the report.

The elderly and kids are pretty much what I'd expect, for the obvious reasons. But why would people of color have higher risk, regardless of age?

Probably because they were of special interest to the article's author, who was motivated to find results that pertain to them. Everything in 2017 has to have a race-angle.

Why wouldn't poor whites be similarly affected, or why are they seldom represented as suffering the same effects in studies?

Because if whites were shown to suffer the same kinds of problems, then the "studies" wouldn't serve as rhetorical ammunition against "racism".

San Francisco, a large city that I often frequent, is overrun by "homeless". These people often suffer from obvious psychiatric illness and are often intoxicated. And I've noticed that they don't typically cross the street at crosswalks and rarely look before stepping out into traffic. Frankly, I don't think that they really care if they get hit.

Most of this population is white.

Another consideration: Much of the poor white population more broadly speaking doesn't suffer from the same kind of social pathologies that poor blacks in particular often suffer from. There are lower rates of single-parenthood, lower rates of drug abuse, lower rates of violent criminality, and poor whites are less apt to inhabit the housing projects (which serve as universities of social disfunction).

Pedestrian recklessness on the streets is a behavioral matter more than it's a direct function of race or poverty. You have to look at who these people are and what their life-circumstances look like.

Especially since when a subject like the "welfare state" or government benefits in that sector comes up, it's often emphasized that there are actually more whites in poverty than other population groups. One reason or assertion is that they're more "scattered" location-wise.

Right. And that's probably something else that changes the results. An ethnic breakdown of the poverty population in New York City or Baltimore will look different than what one would find in West Virginia.

The poverty that poor African Americans experience is often different from the poverty of poor whites. It's more isolating...

I don't believe that's true. Poor blacks are often surrounded by poor blacks. So an individual's poverty doesn't mark him or her out as different from the group or as particularly inadaquate. It's just normal in that environment. Poverty out in the suburbs is more isolating because it isn't so concentrated. The contrast with neighbors who still have jobs is right outside your door. There's a much stronger personal-responsibility ethic out there too.