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Spreading out, staying isolated Segregation follows Hispanics to suburbs 04/04/2001 The Dallas Morning News Besides a landmark park used for occasional fiestas, few traces are left of "Little Mexico," a once thriving Latino enclave north of downtown dissolved by redevelopment and Hispanic upward mobility.
Yet, as the eight-county Dallas metro area, has become more diverse, new Latino neighborhoods have ballooned. Little Mexico may be gone, but patterns of clustering, and with it, segregation remain.
Texas, in fact, illustrates national trends that include the rapid expansion of the Hispanic population, its suburbanization and increasing segregation – whether in the city or the suburbs, said John Logan, a sociologist at the University of Albany.
"Since 1980 and again in the last 10 years, we've seen a shift of all minority groups from central cities to suburban neighborhoods. In almost every case that has been accompanied by increased segregation in suburbia," he said.
Nationally, Hispanics have spread to more areas, but they increasingly live in neighborhoods where they are the largest minority group.
An analysis of census figures shows that the average Hispanic lives in a neighborhood that is 46 percent Hispanic.
In the Dallas metro area, the average Hispanic lives in a tract that is 45 percent Hispanic. The figure is higher for the Dallas central city, where the average Hispanic lives in a tract that is 55 percent Hispanic.
Mr. Logan is director of Albany's Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research, which has compiled data on racial and ethnic segregation in the country's 331 metro areas.
At a National Press Club news conference Tuesday, he said there has been little change in segregation levels from 1990 in the metropolitan areas where most blacks, Hispanics and Asians live.
He cited Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and Houston as among the urban areas with high segregation patterns. He also found that Hispanics are the most isolated in four Texas areas – Laredo, McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Brownsville-Harlingen-San Benito and El Paso – because the population is mostly Hispanic.
Not just Hispanics
The clustering also holds true for other groups.
The average white person in metro America lives in a neighborhood that is almost 83 percent white and 7 percent black. A typical black individual lives in a neighborhood that is as much as 54 percent black and only 33 percent white.
Asians, while more integrated with other ethnic groups, likewise tend to cluster in certain neighborhoods, even as they move to suburbia.
Hispanics are so concentrated in ethnic enclaves, that their mushrooming numbers – one in three Dallas residents and 23 percent of the eight-county metro area is Hispanic – exceeded expectations of experts and community leaders.
"The reason this is such a fascinating story is that, to many people, it [Hispanic growth] has been invisible," said Paul Geisel, professor in the School of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Many of the almost half million Hispanics in Dallas live in Oak Cliff or northwest of Love Field. There, they can speak only Spanish, shop for ethnic foods at Fiesta and Carnival Stores on Jefferson Boulevard or Webb Chapel Road, and send their children to mostly Hispanic schools.
The small town of Cockrell Hill (population 4,443) in the Oak Cliff area is 84 percent Hispanic, and has grown almost 19 percent since 1990, including new immigrants. Hispanics tend to locate where they have a network of family and friends.
Maria Miranda, a full-time mother of three, and her Mexico-born husband, Perfecto, who works for the Dallas school district, settled in Cockrell Hill in 1985. "To us, it was a good price to buy the house," she said. "We could live in a white neighborhood, it's no problem."
They stayed there because "it's kind of something you already know. You get to meet the people and know the stores."
Seeing advantages
Meanwhile, as white families move to newer suburbs farther away, Hispanics are taking advantage of older and cheaper housing stock in closer-in suburbs, such as Farmers Branch, Grand Prairie, Richardson and Garland.
Of the large Dallas County suburbs, Farmers Branch has the greatest concentration of Hispanics, or 37 percent of its population, followed by Grand Prairie, with 33 percent. Irving has the highest number of Hispanics with 59,800, followed by Garland with 55,000. About 60,000 Hispanics live in Arlington in Tarrant County.
State Rep. Ken Marchant, R-Coppell, said Hispanic residents choose areas because of affordable housing, access to freeways and good schools.
Carrollton and Farmers Branch, which are in his district, provide proximity to LBJ Freeway and Interstate 35, so getting to work is more convenient. The gathering places also are closer to the freeways because that's where housing is available. And, he said, "A real concern of Hispanic families is to get in good school districts."
Besides Dallas, three other school districts in the county are majority-minority – Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Grand Prairie and Irving. Hispanics make up 46 percent in Grand Prairie schools, 45 percent in Irving schools and 31 percent in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch district, which also has a 13 percent Asian student population.
Asian settings
With their population growth, Asians also live in more isolated settings than they did in 1990.
Many Vietnamese, who originally settled in East Dallas, have moved to Garland. Indian Asians tend to cluster in Irving. More than 10 percent of Plano's population is Asian, including families of Chinese ancestry, resulting in four new weekend Chinese schools.
When a population shifts occurs, it is usually accompanied by indigenous markets, shopping centers and churches. For example, Arlington has an Asian shopping center on Pioneer Parkway. A Korean market has developed in the Harry Hines and Royal Lane area of Dallas. Other Asian shopping and restaurants are clustered along Walnut in Garland and near Belt Line east of Central Expressway in Richardson.
As for black residents, they remain 26 percent of the Dallas population, but their share in some suburbs grew since 1990, with significant concentrations of blacks in such southern suburbs as Lancaster and DeSoto.
Charles Kamasaki of the National Council of La Raza, who joined Mr. Logan at his news conference, acknowledged that immigrants, particularly those with poor English skills, tend to self-select and cluster in ethnic enclaves. But not all of the patterns are caused by self-segregation.
Real-estate agents' role
Civil rights scholar Gary Orfield of Harvard University said real estate agents often steer buyers to particular neighborhoods.
"We've got to figure out how to make multi-racial neighborhoods work," he said.
As for Mr. Logan, he called the segregation trend in Texas "disturbing," saying, "I see it as a sign of erection of stronger barriers between groups when it may be more important for us to pull together."
Michelle Mittelstadt in Washington contributed to this report. |
