Literature Review
South Dallas, specifically Fair Park, is known for its high crime rates. Its violent crime rate is 20.5%, five times higher than the national average, and the property crime is 68.1%, three times higher than the national average. The most common crimes being robbery, assault, burglary, and theft (Wiley 2023). Typically, when a neighborhood has a high crime rate, it has a bad reputation. Fair Park is no different. Outside of the reputation that the State Fair brings about two months out of the year, Fair Park is well known as a bad, non-recommended area. What people don't realize is that high crime rates are typically the result of other issues in the neighborhood. The underlying issue would be systematic discrimination and racism. Because Fair Park is a predominantly black area, it is more susceptible to these systematic issues (Wilson 1990). Systematic judicial issues can also create a rocky relationship with the police, which South Dallas has, which can then lead to more crime in the long run, as residents do not respect local authority (Simek, 2017). Some things that can lead to high crime rates that people don't necessarily think about are low high school graduation rates, high teenage pregnancy rates, and a high percentage of female-led households.
Systematic racism goes deeper than just the judicial system. An example of judicial racism and segregation is where governmental low-income housing is created and how it is distributed. White people do not typically want to reside in the same neighborhoods as black people, especially if they are not as well off as the average American (Krysan 2017). This has led to Redlining and blockbusting (Sampson 2012). Instead of distributing low-income housing throughout the city, the government tends to put all of it in one area. Historically low-income households tend to be African Americans, thus leading to segregation. This concentration of low-income households and issues that can come from low-income households leads to a concentration of crime (Auguste et al. 2023).
Some of these issues are seen as bigger and others smaller, but in reality, they all work together in leading to high crime rates. A low graduation rate can oftentimes mean a lack of resources and or support. When people do not feel supported, they often become angry and then take that anger out by doing things that they have no business doing, such as committing a crime. Also, a low graduation rate can mean that kids are not in school when they should be, which gives them more time to commit crimes. High crime rates also come from a lack of education, which comes from low graduation rates. Low graduation rates can also lead to high rates of teenage pregnancy, due to a lack of education. Teenage pregnancy often leads to single-female-headed households. This is common in Fair Park and can explain some of the poverty in the neighborhood. Female-led households tend to make less money than male-led households and are less likely to have a second household income (Wilson 1990). This lower income can also lead to a lack of resources, which then goes back to low high school graduation rates. Without community or government intervention, it can be a never-ending cycle (Wade et al. 2014).
The first step in a neighborhood like this would be to create a better relationship between local law enforcement and residents. With a better relationship, local law enforcement can better address small crimes and eventually lower the crime rate in general. In relation to the broken windows theory, if petty crimes like busting windows conclude, due to better policing, larger crimes would also conclude (Wilson 2007). In terms of nonjudicial help, neighborhoods like this often tend to have gangs, which can be a turn-off for nonprofit and political structures to help (Vargas 2016). South Dallas does have some gang activity, although not as bad as other large cities. While the gang activity may not be as bad, it could still be causing a lack of support for the community. South Dallas has recently seen a 19% reduction in crime due to a data-driven reduction plan that was put in place (Willard 2024). While that is a good start, more could be done.
Neighborhood History and Demographics Memo
The state of Texas is known for its elaborate annual State Fair located in Fair Park, Dallas, Texas, specifically the zip code 75210. When people think about the State Fair, it is often associated with positive, fun memories, activities, foods, and celebrations. Although this loving reputation has grown over time, it wasn't always like that, and it's still not like that for the people in the neighborhood surrounding the park grounds. There are several neighborhoods surrounding the State Fair of Texas that convey a very different picture of Dallas than the fair does. The site of the Texas State Fair was once a cotton plantation, including a lot of the land around it. Even after the lands were declared for the Texas State Fair, there was still extreme segregation in practice at the fair. An example of this extreme segregation would be “Negro Day”, the one day of the year that African Americans were allowed in the early days of fair. The neighborhoods of Fair Park have a large population of low-income, impoverished African Americans, reflective of the neighborhood in the 1880s, when the fair was open. This shows little improvement in the neighborhoods over the last almost century and a half. In part, the fair was a plan to hide the poor community in this part of South Dallas and to appeal to the outside, rich white population. In the 1920s, the fairground was a very well-known recruitment site for the Ku Klux Klan, also known as the KKK. With a history this racist and segregated, there are several issues among the population of people who live in the surrounding neighborhoods, who aren't just attendees of the State Fair for two months out of the year. It was already hard for African Americans to progress in society during these times, especially in the South. It makes it even harder to progress in society when, instead of trying to help these communities, there is a giant attraction park placed in the center of it as a distraction (Crain 2021).
The current demographics of the neighborhood surrounding the fairgrounds in this particular zip code are poor. The percentage of white people who live in this area is 6%. This number is extremely low in the context of the city of Dallas as a whole. In the context of the history of the area, it is expected. Typically, when plantations could not operate anymore, the owners moved out of the area, leaving the former slaves as the main population. The percentage of foreign-born people in this area is 4.5%, which is a little less than the median percentage for the entire city of Dallas. This does not come as a surprise, as oftentimes when immigrants fail to succeed, they end up in impoverished areas, just as our native citizens often do. In this zip code, the median income is $19,000. This is significantly lower for not only the city of Dallas but also nationally. With the median income being so low, the median rent is only $637, which is on the lower end for the city of Dallas. The employment rate of Fair Park is 77%, which is just above the median. When looking at such a low median income but an above median employment rate, there are several other factors to take into account. The first one is the high school graduation rate. For this area, their high school graduation rate is 77%, which is much lower than the median for the entire city of Dallas. This is significant because, as a society, a high school diploma is usually the minimum amount of schooling you can do to obtain certain jobs, especially higher-paying jobs. The college graduation rate in this area is 19%, which is only slightly below the median for the city of Dallas, which has less of an effect than the high school graduation rate. Another important aspect to consider is the poverty rate. The poverty rate is 35%, which is extremely high in comparison to the rest of the city of Dallas. One reason the poverty rate plays a significant factor in the low-income median is because most people living in poverty do not have access to transportation, or if they do have access to transportation, it's public transportation, and the Dallas public transportation system is not as extensive as, say, New York’s. Then you can look at the density of jobs in the area, which for this location is, surprisingly, two thousand per square mile, which is fairly high. The fraction of short work commutes is 22%, which is a little below the median. This means the commute to work for the people who live in this area is similar to people who live in the rest of Dallas. These statistics may be slightly skewed due to the State Fair. Although the State Fair only runs a couple of months out of the year, it creates an enormous amount of jobs for those couple of months and employs a large amount of the city population. The job growth in this area between 2004 and 2013 was 4.4%, which is on the higher side, but again, this is in large part due to the extreme growth that the fairgrounds have seen. More specifically, in 2013, when the new Big Tex debuted, the fair saw a significant increase in attendance (Opportunity Atlas).
Outside of the job market, there are several other demographic statistics we can look at to get a better understanding of the area. The incarceration rate for this area is 9.1%, the teenage birth rate is over 50%, the fraction of single parents is 64%, and the percentage of married individuals at 35 is 13%. These statistics are all on the extreme side for the entire city of Dallas, whether it is extremely low or extremely high, whichever is worse. These are all important statistics to look at when talking about poverty. Fair Park is an impoverished area, and all of these statistics play hand in hand in why the poverty rate is so high for the population of 31,918 (Opportunity Atlas).
Although there has been some growth as far back as 1978 to now in Fair Park, it is not significant enough to see real change. There are neighborhood initiatives such as Clean South Dallas. There have been efforts to put in nicer parks, streets, and better access to public transportation. These initiatives have somewhat helped to develop the neighborhood, but it has not proven to be enough. Between 1990 and 2009, the change in the median household was negative $11,000, essentially going from poor to poorer. The change in the fraction of employed parents was negative 4.9 Percent, which was high for the city of Dallas. The change in poverty rate was 2.8 which was also high. These last three statistics show the regression of these neighborhoods. On the other hand, the change in college graduates was 1.1, meaning more people were graduating college. The change in the fraction of single-parent households was 6.7 from 1990 to 2009, which was slightly below the median, meaning there has been an increase in the amount of single-parent households (Opportunity Atlas).
The context of this regression or maybe stagnation can be given by looking at the relationship between the fairgrounds and the surrounding neighborhoods. Going back to the beginning, the park was the site of slavery and then became an extremely segregated area where African Americans were only allowed on very few occasions. However, the demographic of the surrounding neighborhoods is predominantly African Americans. This did not set up a good foundation for the relationship between the fairgrounds and their immediate neighbors. There is still a lot of disconnect when looking at the success of the State Fair and the impoverished neighborhoods around it (Simek, 2017). Also, because of the State Fair, there has been a lot more effort put into the fair and attracting outsiders to the fair than there has been to help the people in the surrounding neighborhoods, leaving the surrounding neighborhoods in impoverished conditions while the fair continues to become increasingly more successful, profitable, and reputable.
Individual Observation Notes
Walking around the neighborhoods of Fair Parks was almost exactly as I expected. It is mainly a residential area, minus the fairgrounds and the few businesses on the front side of the fairgrounds. Most of those businesses are restaurants or something similar. There are a few gas stations and corner stores throughout the neighborhoods, but not much else for commercial businesses. There are a few restaurants spread out within the neighborhoods, but there are a few. These are not chain restaurants or nice restaurants; they're just kind of hole-in-the-wall, mom-and-pop, family-owned restaurants. Outside of the few corner stores, there are no retail spaces in this area. There is one smaller neighborhood (maybe remnants of a neighborhood) or at least a few streets of houses close to the fairgrounds off of Martin Luther King Boulevard that have a few large historic brick homes. Although they seem to be run down or vacant, and have not been kept up with throughout the years. Most of the houses in this area are very small, outdated, old, and run-down. The plots of land are typically pretty small, and all of the houses relatively follow the same vibe. The older the houses, the more they look different. The newer the houses, the more they look cookie-cutter. But they all kind of follow the same size and style of housing. A lot of these houses are visibly falling apart unless they are brand new.
The demographic of this area is predominantly African Americans. This is a low-income neighborhood, and there is a high-poverty population compared to the rest of Dallas. While I was walking around, I saw quite a few people sitting around on their porches or in their yards. Most of them were older men sitting outside smoking and talking to each other. I saw some children walking, I am assuming home from school, as they had on uniforms and were carrying backpacks. I did see a lot of cars throughout the neighborhood, but very few were actually being driven. Quite a few people were walking and waiting at bus stops. There were some neighborhood interactions, but not a substantial amount. It seems that most community members have their own group of people and do not go out of that group of people very often. For example, most of the interactions I saw were with immediate neighbors, and as I made my way through, they seemed kind of standoffish toward outsiders.
In terms of crime, there were several indicators that this may be a high-crime area. The biggest one to me would be the fact that most of the windows you see in homes and commercial sites have bars or cardboard on their windows. Bars on their windows are usually a deterrent for theft, while cardboard is usually an indication that a recent break-in has happened. Boarded-up windows could also mean that they cannot afford to repair damages from a past break-in. A few of the houses in the neighborhood also have metal screen doors, and an even smaller portion had gates around their property. Another indication of high crime is cars sitting on bricks. This seems to be a common sight in some of the Fair Park neighborhoods, about a car or so every other street. Now, a car here and there sitting on bricks does not necessarily stand out, but once it becomes frequent, it could be an indication of frequent tire theft, which has been common in Dallas (Barry 2016). Lastly, an indication that I noticed while I was there was the lack of retail spaces. Retail spaces do not thrive in areas of high crime due to their inventory getting stolen, so a lack of retail space throughout multiple neighborhoods can lead to high theft rates. On the other hand, more retail shops could lead to lower crime rates due to higher traffic, so an increase in retail shops could be a benefit to this area. Something that I did not notice while I was there, but have noticed many times before, is cops sitting around. Oftentimes, they will just park their car on certain streets and then move around the neighborhood throughout the day. I did not see much of that on the day that I went to do my observations. I wonder if that is because I went towards the end of the school day, but I'm not sure.
The neighborhood was as I expected. Something that I did not expect was how exploitative taking pictures for this assignment was going to feel while completing it. As I was driving and walking through, I felt immense guilt that I was not prepared for. I did not have any direct interactions with any of the people in the neighborhoods, but I did get some stares while walking through. Not necessarily uncomfortable stares, but just like an I’ve never seen you before stare. I tried not to take pictures where there were people directly congregating or take pictures of anybody directly. This proved to be slightly difficult as there were a lot of people sitting around and walking around the neighborhood. Due to this, I feel like I could have gotten better pictures, but I was not trying to be as discreet as possible. I was a little nervous for a possible reaction if someone did not like me taking pictures around their neighborhood. It was fairly easy to get around the neighborhoods. The roads were in better condition than I was expecting for a low-income area. I'm assuming that is because it is so close to the fairgrounds. Something that I might want to look into more is the fact that so many people were sitting around during the day. During the time that I went, it was between the afternoon and evening, so a lot of people could have just gotten off of work, but it also seemed like people had been sitting around their porches all day. Sometimes, people sitting around outside their neighborhoods all day can be an indicator of low employment, which can sometimes lead to higher rates of crime. Another thing I would like to look further into is the older population of the neighborhoods. There were quite a few homes with ramps leading up to their front porches and doors, which is a good indicator of a disabled and elderly population. These two groups of people are very vulnerable and susceptible to violent crimes, so I wonder if that plays into the high crime rate of Fair Park.
There are several theories and research results to help us better understand the disadvantages Fair Park faces. One of the main theories prevalent in this neighborhood is the broken windows theory. This theory states that if one window is broken, all of the windows will be broken, and the presence of crime will create more crime (Wilson, Kelling, and Muncie 2007). Fair Park’s high crime rate is a consequence of the history of the neighborhood, its relationship with the government, and systemic discrimination. Systematic discrimination plays a large part in the disadvantages seen in Fair Park and is a factor in its lack of progress socially (Wilson 1990). These disadvantages lead to high crime and eventually lead to a lack of gentrification. South Dallas is starting to see high rates of gentrification, but it is skipping Fair Park. There are several factors that go into gentrifying an area. Fair Park has a lot of land that investors could buy for cheap, flip it, and put it back on the market for high rates of return. On the surface, this is prime real estate for gentrifiers (Freeman 2006). One of the main factors stopping them from doing this is the high violent crime rate. People seem to be more ok with high property crime rates rather than high violent crime rates, which is what makes places like Deep Ellum more susceptible to gentrification than Fair Park.
I think this neighborhood is as expected for a low-income urban area. It is predominantly African American, the poverty rate is high, the graduation rate is low, the mobility is low, it is a food desert, and the housing and infrastructure are rundown. These are all characteristics of a typical low-income urban area. This neighborhood does have a few exceptions to these things, the closer you get to the front of the State Fairgrounds, but it is strictly performative and only in that immediate area. It slightly surprised me that there was any gentrification happening at all, but one of the new, very nice houses being built was vandalized. The vandalization, I feel, like is a good representation of how the neighborhood feels about the start of gentrification in this area and why there is so little now. Other than that, this neighborhood is pretty on par for the kind of neighborhood it is.
Reference Page
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