ANTH 3368 Urban Life

"Great to Know You, Dallas"

By James Ragland

[Published November 22, 2002; Dallas Morning News]

Dr. Robert V. Kemper is on a mission - and so are his students.

For three decades, the Southern Methodist University professor has been exploring Dallas in his classroom and in his car.

"Dallas is perhaps the most under-studied major city in the country," he says, explaining that too many people, mainly outsiders, still see Big D as a hot and dry Wild West oil town - "even though oil has never been struck in Dallas County."

Mention Big D and among the first things that still come to mind are the Dallas Cowboys, the old Dallas TV series and, of course, the Kennedy assassination.

When he moved here from California in 1972, he had a narrow view of the city, too. "Early along, I realized I didn't know a lot about Dallas," he says. "And my students knew even less."

But Dr. Kemper, who teaches anthropology and urban ministry courses, is in a position to change that. He started writing about Dallas in the early '70s while also teaching courses on culture and diversity in American life. He knows the city better than most.

"Dallas has changed tremendously in terms of where the power is and the distribution of that power to groups who didn't have it," he says, noting the growing political clout of women, Hispanics and blacks over the years. Not only has it changed politically, he points out, Dallas also has changed culturally.

"Dallas has expanded geographically into the suburbs so dramatically, like Los Angeles did in the post-World War II era," he says. As a result, "many folks who live here identify themselves with Dallas but never actually come to Dallas, in part because one of the city's biggest tragedies - and maybe tragedy is too harsh a term - is that the downtown core is so un-alive."

Still, Dallas is one of the more dynamic and interesting cities in America, he says. And he's changing the way his students see it by compelling them to leave their desks and dorms and go on a "treasure hunt."

In one of his anthropology courses, he gives the students, divided into teams of two or three, a list of 40 sites to visit. The students must map their own routes and visit at least 32 of the sites to earn a full course credit.

And, of course, they must write a paper about their experiences.

The list includes ethnic grocery stores, diverse schools, parks and churches, and key landmarks such as the Dallas Zoo in Oak Cliff, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center downtown and Fair Park's Music Hall.

But there also are places on the list that most, if not all, of the students may never have glimpsed without the assignment, such as a row of "shotgun" houses in a low-income area of South Dallas, a housing development in West Dallas and a downtown shelter for the homeless.

One student, Lola Hashem, a 24-year-old senior advertising major who grew up in affluent Highland Park, says the exercise was an eye-opener on two fronts: "The fact that I have lived here my whole life and didn't know that many of these places existed made me realize that I do live in a bubble," she says. "And I realized how much we all make snap judgments about people," she says. "When we see someone over here [in Highland Park] who looks out of their place, we may stare at them and talk about it. And I had the reverse thing happen to me."

When she and two female classmates were driving an expensive sports car in a poor neighborhood, she says, she felt so out of place. She says they stopped to ask two police officers for directions, and one of them said he would give her directions only if she would "switch cars with him." The other one told her to keep her doors locked.

Driving around west and south of downtown, she wrote in her paper, made her realize "how many unfortunate people there are in this city and how [tough] some people have it. I also was thrown back by the fact that a five-minute drive can take you from a good neighborhood to what some would call a 'ghetto.'"

Another student, Adam Stoermer, a 21-year-old history major from Tulsa, Okla., says he was struck by the mix of cultures along one Dallas road.

"The thing I found interesting was driving down Harry Hines [Boulevard], you can go from one ethnic area to another, from an Asian community on one end to Little Mexico on the other. And then there was a biker bar on the same street. Those are three cultures you wouldn't typically see on your Sunday afternoon drive."

Some of the students acknowledge that they were uneasy leaving their comfort zones. Visiting the InfoMart was one thing, but going onto unfamiliar neighborhoods gave them pause.

"At first, I was a little apprehensive," says Robin Al-haddad, 26, an anthropology major. "But once I got out there and did it, I enjoyed it."

The central idea, says Dr. Kemper, is to get students to open their eyes and minds, and to see the city for what it is, as opposed to its popular or commercial image.

He put the Federal Reserve Bank on the list, he says, because it signifies what Dallas is more than oil. "We're not an oil town. We are a business and finance town." The Dry Gulch Recycling Center is on the list "as a reminder that the environment makes a difference in people's lives, and they shouldn't be throwing aluminum cans out on the street."

He put a Danals grocery store on the list because it is an indicator of the growing Hispanic influence in neighborhoods. He added the Korea House restaurant near Royal Lane and Harry Hines, to show how Asian-Americans are having an impact.

Of the 40 sites, he says, "If I had to have a favorite, it would have to be Congo Street [in South Dallas] and the shotgun houses down on Clarendon on the way to the Dallas Zoo."

Those two sites, he says, reflect the "25 percent of people who are in a desperate situation," and students need to see that side of Dallas, too, as well as its downtown office towers.

"What we teach is not just about the facts," Dr. Kemper says. "What I really aim to do is see if students can see the world in a different way than when they came into my class."