A Crack in the Broken-Windows Theory

Here's a very interesting article discussing the "broken windows" theory. The study compared people's perceptions of their own neighborhoods with independent raters' perceptions of the same neighborhoods (as viewed on videotape). Oddly enough, both white and black residents claimed to perceive more disorder and decay in their own neighborhoods if there was a greater number of black residents, "even in neighborhoods that the raters had judged to be no more ramshackle than others with a smaller proportion of black residents."

Stuart Buck