Denver has not for a long time been riven with the sort of racial hostility that other major cities have suffered — and for that we should be grateful.
So it was with concern that we viewed the .
According to Debbie Ortega, the council and the redistricting process should “defend everyone’s right to elect a Denver City Council representative that looks and talks like them.”
Denverites should not be encouraged to harden the lines of racial identity and elevate those above other interests as citizens of this city.
Let’s keep in mind what the demographic trends in Denver truly are. The city is getting whiter. It’s a subtle trend, but the city’s share of white residents has been inching up for several years now. This is counter to the sustained growth in the Latino population during recent decades.
As noted by reporter Burt Hubbard in stories for The Post in 2009 and 2010, . Meanwhile, the suburbs became more diverse.
Does this mean Denver residents ought to elect more white council members? We hope that in posing the question, the answer is obvious.
Denver has demonstrated time and again that it knows how to transcend race when it comes to choosing elected officials. Even though the city is only about 10 percent black, . Previously they have elected Wellington Webb, who is black, Federico Peña, who is Latino, and John Hickenlooper, who is white.
Redistricting raises tensions. We understand that. It’s uncomfortable for elected officials, who might see their support eroded with different district lines.
Every 10 years, the city must redraw council boundaries with the goal of having each district represent an equal number of people.
Ortega, who sent the controversial e-mail, later said her comments were meant to suggest that redrawn boundaries , according to a story by The Post’s Jeremy P. Meyer.
That’s well and good, and we hope that is the baseline for redistricting. Other factors surely are important too, as Councilwoman Mary Beth Susman noted in an e-mail to other council members.
“Do we think ethnicity is the only defining difference between communities of interest? I just can’t believe that a citizen of Asian-American descendancy has a special idea about whether she should pay for trash pick-up that is ethnically different from what a citizen of Anglo-Saxon descendancy like me would. Shouldn’t we think about many variables related to communities of interest?”
We think so. We hope so.
Racial differences should be the diversity that makes Denver interesting, not the lines that divide us.
