It is a fact that a lot of people are scared of people who look different or come from a different culture or who are poorer, economically speaking. This applies to both blacks and whites, not to mention all the other varieties and shades. Scarboro was 99.9% fairly affluent white middle-class in the 60's. It is now more predominantly Asian and black, I'd say, but still a fair number whites. It's also a lot dirtier and there's a lot more crime, but that is a result of declining incomes, not any kind of inherent racial tendencies on anyone's parts. Where there is more poverty, there is also more crime...street crime, that is.

A look at the notorious Five Points district in 1850's New York City would provide a spectacular example of the phenomenon. In that case you had a mostly white population living in the most awful slum conditions imaginable, and crime and suffering of every kind was rampant. Murder was an everyday ocurrence. The Irish were the most recent immigrants, the most economically disadvantaged ones, and the ones who got the most blame for the situation by other people who were better off or had been around there longer.

This kind of thing just goes around and around again and again. Every social era has its chosen "untouchables", and at that point it was the Irish. In the 70's and 80's the most stigmatized people in Toronto were East Asian immigrants from India and Pakistan. There was all kinds of bad talk about them among the more ignorant sectors of the white population.

The Five Points slums were depicted in the recent film "Gangs of New York".