OUR VIEW: Why we symbolize diversity and tolerance (vote in poll)

The left won’t like this, but it is true: Conservative, stingy old Colorado Springs just became a symbol of diversity. The notion that limited-government, low-tax community values equal intolerant monoculturalism no longer holds up.

Long-held cultural perceptions and assumptions are often wrong. Anyone capable of critical analysis, who lives in Colorado Springs, knows this is true. The mainstream national media malign our city as a cautionary tale of taxpayers demanding fiscal responsibility and limited government during tough economic times. It’s awful what happens in a place like Colorado Springs. The city ends up conserving coal-generated electricity and finite water resources. Residents adopt trash cans in parks and raise money for community centers. What a nightmare.

Each time some raise-our-taxes progressive points to a pothole as evidence limited government has created a Third World city, some national magazine publishes results of a city-by-city assessment of quality-of-life factors — such as employment, cost of living and income. Colorado Springs reliably shows up among the 10 or 20 best cities in which to live. In the past five years, Money and Outside magazines have listed Colorado Springs as the best large city in which to live, negating the death-spiral myth.

Another stereotype casts Colorado Springs as a homogeneous white-bread community of intolerant, fundamentalist Christians. Here’s how the Washington Post described us in 1997: “Called the ‘Vatican of evangelical Christianity,’ Colorado Springs has a reputation for intolerance and venomous, values-based politics.”

Yet the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials must not see it that way. It honored Colorado Springs on Monday with its City Cultural Diversity Award, recognizing the Colorado Springs Diversity Forum and its Everybody Welcome festival. This is indeed a city where all are welcome.

Michael Roberts, the media writer for Denver’s Westword, expressed the media’s predictable shock. In his blog, Roberts wrote: “When most of us think of diverse towns, Colorado Springs isn’t the first place that leaps to mind. But somehow, someway, the Springs is one of four U.S. communities to win a City Cultural Diversity Award…”

It isn’t surprising to free-market, limited-government economists. They know socioeconomic, cultural, ethnic and racial diversity tends to decrease in cities that levy high taxes and impose draconian community planning policies that inflate the cost of living. Cities that value limited government and low taxation, such as Colorado Springs, tend to maintain environments of inclusion and diversity.

(Please vote in poll to the right, in red type. Must vote to see results. Thanks!)

Culturally and politically liberal Boulder provides an example of a neighbor that established exclusion through escalated taxation and central planning.

A black community once thrived up and down Boulder’s Water Street, but most black families long ago left and the city renamed the street. Today, blacks comprise 1.22 percent of Boulder; 6.56 percent of Colorado Springs. Hispanics comprise 8.9 percent of Boulder; 12.01 percent of Colorado Springs. Minorities comprise a higher percentage of Colorado Springs than Boulder in nearly every category. About 20 percent of Colorado Springs residents are ethnic or racial minorities, compared to 12 percent of Boulder residents. That means Colorado Spring hosts nearly double the per capita diversity as a city up the road that is somehow known for diversity.

In general, with exceptions, Colorado communities with the highest taxes and most rigorous planning regimens have the lowest diversity. On the extremes, heavily planned Aspen has a population that’s 91 percent white; Vail is 94 percent white. Limited-government, low-tax Greeley is 55 percent white, 45 percent minority.

Communities that raise the cost of living with high taxes and exclusionary planning also shove away families with young children. Kids under age 18 comprise 27 percent of Colorado Springs; 15 percent of Boulder. Children comprise only 13 percent of Aspen, and less than 10 percent of Vail.

This is not to criticize the taxing and planning policies of heavily planned cities with high taxes. It is to show they are not diverse. Most are beautiful, clean, and enjoy an abundance of well-maintained communal property. Yet anyone who claims to value diverse communities of minorities, artists and families with small children should prefer Colorado Springs — a city unfairly maligned for venomous intolerance.

Low taxes, limited government, and individual liberty favor the arts and all forms of diversity. Limited government cities promote the politics of inclusion. That may explain why the Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials felt comfortable honoring Colorado Springs for celebrating itself as a place where everybody is welcome.

— Wayne Laugesen, editorial page editor, for the editorial board

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