Judging neighborhood quality

Race is a powerful factor in determining how whites regard a neighborhood, according to a study led by UIC sociologist Maria Krysan. Shown videos of the same residential streets — the only difference being the race of the people who seemed to live there — whites rated the neighborhoods with black residents lower in quality than the ones with white residents. Racially mixed neighborhoods fell in between. According to Krysan and her colleagues, understanding the barriers to integration is the first step to finding a solution to segregation. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the University of Michigan, the Ford Foundation and UIC.

View all in the sampling of the articles in the 2008-09 Annual Report.