Aurora’s Dramatic Diversity Development

My mother raised me in one of the whitest cities in America. She died in one of the most racially and culturally diverse. Both while living in the same house.

One of a handful of Colorado cities where minorities are now the majority, Aurora is experiencing a renaissance. Here, there is no majority culture. The city’s racial profile is so complex Asian markets, Mexican restaurants, and East Indian incense shops are found on the same block.

“We have lived in Aurora for 12 years,” Katherine Rosechild said. She and Kristine Wilson, her partner of nearly 14 years, raised 3 children there. “We love the diversity.  In our backyard you may hear gospel music from one of our neighbors on a Sunday [then hear] Asian music and Turkish languages from the children and adults on the other sides of us.”

What sets Aurora apart from many other cities is the large number of contributing cultures. According to the Aurora History Museum more than 100 languages are now spoken in the city’s public schools. That is not a typo.

The Census Bureau’s racial breakdown looks something like this:  roughly 46 percent of the population is white, 29 percent is Hispanic, and 15 percent is black. That leaves a full 10 percent of the population falling into other minority groups. And it doesn’t stop there. The city is at the center of Colorado’s refugee growth with a sizable population of people from Nepal, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.

This year WalletHub ranked Aurora as the 38th most diverse city in the country. Denver came in 81st. They based their research on ethnicity and race, language, and birthplace.

The Rosechild/Wilson family fits right in.

“Our kids have so many moms and connections you need a flowchart to follow: Five of us moms (exes included), gay dad, straight godfather and many more in their extended family. Black, white, Jewish with a variety of backgrounds and beliefs,” said Rosechild.

There are no census figures on the number of LGBTQ residents, but there’s no question the community here is expanding. With the upscale Stapleton development now moving into north Aurora, gays and lesbians are riding the wave into this and other eclectic neighborhoods.

“In Lowry quite a few people are gay,” said Billy Rediess, who lives in the area bordering east Denver. “It just seems like everybody’s cool with it.”

Rediess owns and operates Miters Touch, an exclusive one-of-a-kind closet building and organizing company. After 30 years in Denver, he recently relocated his shop to Aurora. In addition to the lower rents, he said he’s finding a lot of work in the city’s growing number of extremely high-end homes.

While Rediess is far from the only gay man where he lives, Rosechild said she and Wilson are the only lesbian couple they know of in their neighborhood.

“We are pretty suburban and all that diversity doesn’t extend to seeing lots of gays and lesbians. The rainbow flags are few and far between,” she said.

That soon may change as Aurora experiences its first ever Pride celebration this summer. She and other members of the city’s LGBTQ community will finally have a celebration to meet one another.

This is in sharp contrast to the Aurora I grew up in.

My family moved here when it was one of the nation’s fastest growing cities. The year I arrived, census figures show more than 97 percent of the population was white. In our neighborhood, most parents were middle-class liberals who waived their diversity flags proudly.

They set up open-area schools. No walls would divide us. A menorah was placed next to our school’s Christmas tree. And every year the Liu family would take us on a cultural odyssey to teach us about a wildly intriguing Hawaiian celebration known as a luau. No really. This thing came with whole roasted pigs, women in grass skirts, and a side-dish that tasted like paste (poi). How much more diversity could we ask for?

Apparently, a lot.

Rosechild said her daughter wore “Legalize Gay” T-shirts when she went to Aurora’s Overland High School. When I was a member of the first graduating class, no one talked about LGBTQ issues and you could count the number of minority students on one hand. Today minority enrollment is 76 percent and this educational melting pot is making national headlines.

Named as one of America’s top 10 high schools by Newsweek in 2010, it now boasts a cutting edge Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) facility. STEM is a program that recruits girls and other minorities under-represented in work-place scientific and mathematical fields.

“My daughter… recently graduated from college in May with a degree in Cognitive Science. I think STEM played a role,” said Rosechild.

Why would so many minorities move into what was once the fastest growing (mostly white) city in America?

Dorothy Jones is a realtor who’s watched the landscape change. She said the answer is simple.

“It’s a nice place to raise your children. It’s clean, the crime rate is low… our economy is good.”

She moved her family to Aurora in the 70s and was one of the very first African Americans to do so.  As for racial prejudice she says, “If you don’t encourage your children to discriminate, they don’t.”

It would be easy for so many different people living side-by-side to have conflicts. Similar cities experience discrimination, infighting, even race wars. In Aurora the tightly woven cultural mosaic seems to be thriving. Everyone brings something valuable to the table. It’s paying off with good schools, good neighborhoods, a growing economy, and more and more people moving in to enjoy it.

Aurora still has a ways to go. The Human Rights Campaign gave the city 66 points out of a possible 100 for LGBTQ inclusivity in municipal law. That was in 2013. According to the HRC Aurora could do better. Denver, by comparison, scored a near perfect 99 points.

Rosechild’s experiences don’t mesh with the HRC report.

She lived in Denver for 13 years before moving to Aurora and she says her family was embraced there in ways they were not in Denver.

“We see ourselves reflected racially and for the first time we were met with a welcome gift from a neighbor (a plate of brownies) and the Turkish family gave us some traditional meats they had grilled. That type of community welcome we hadn’t seen from any of the places we lived in Denver,” Rosechild said.