In my experience white people (in america) love unconventional pets. This is anecdotal of course but I’ve met a POC with reptiles but it’s few and far between compared to the handful of people I know with whole rooms in their houses dedicated to spiders, insects, and reptiles (always including a roach farm for feeding) and they’re all white.

And outside of that I feel it takes a white world view to see a wild animal and want to snatch it from its habitat and bring it into your house for purely aesthetic reasons without considering the work required.

Obviously this isn’t everyone, I’m the white one in my relationship but it was my boyfriend who campaigned hard for us to get a third cat.

For me it's because having a racoon pet is a northern rural thing, and northern rural is white coded in my mind.

Raccoons as pets is definitely more a hillbilly thing then a rich people thing.