If your concern is that the researchers failed at picking confederates whose race, judged by appearance, would be interpreted the way the researchers expected it to be, close enough to 100% of the time to not have affected the outcome... I very much doubt they failed in that way.
If that's not your concern, then I've lost track of what your complaint is.
[EDIT] Reply to your edit: Yes, that's... the point? [EDIT AGAIN] Wait, are you saying that it's racist for the researchers to categorize pedestrians' races based on appearance? If so, I'd regard that objection as specious. That's not racist. Having-to-do-with-race isn't what racism is. It could be inaccurate (or not!) but it's not racist. In any event, it seems they didn't actually measure a difference in reaction of pedestrians based on their own race (!) so it may not be relevant anyway.
> If your concern is that the researchers failed at picking confederates whose race, judged by appearance, would be interpreted the way the researchers expected it to be, close enough to 100% of the time to not have affected the outcome… I very much doubt they failed in that way.
That’s a legitimate concern since the methodology on how “racial phenotypes” of “Black” and “non-Hispanic White” were identified for the confederate pairs is not identified. We know their assessment of the race of the subjects whose behavior is studied is measurably lower than 100%, because they actually have reliability data on that by comparison with a second rater.
If that's not your concern, then I've lost track of what your complaint is.
[EDIT] Reply to your edit: Yes, that's... the point? [EDIT AGAIN] Wait, are you saying that it's racist for the researchers to categorize pedestrians' races based on appearance? If so, I'd regard that objection as specious. That's not racist. Having-to-do-with-race isn't what racism is. It could be inaccurate (or not!) but it's not racist. In any event, it seems they didn't actually measure a difference in reaction of pedestrians based on their own race (!) so it may not be relevant anyway.