Rebuild Ghetto Walls?

This article about the Aurora City Council came out last Friday, and I'm still trying to decide if it's good news or not. Aurora doesn't seem to be electing minorities to City Council. But one of the reasons cited is that there aren't ethnic enclaves developing, which seems to me to be a good thing. After all, if we wanted people to live in ghettos we'd put gates at the end of the street and lock them at night. There are at-large seats, and I always thought that a neighborhood was a far more important community of interest that skin color. One of the hispanic men cited in the article all but says that if minorities want to get elected, they'll just have to master the issues, also what I thought we were aiming for. So that's the good news.

The bad news is that, typically, there are minority leaders who are calling for the Aurora government to "do more" to "reach out" to blacks and hispanics. (There are no other minorities. None.) The article cites with hope and optimism the coalescing of a hispanic area in north Aurora. So, soon enough, these folks will be getting flyers telling them that they're "not represented," and that it's more important to vote for the Spanish-speaking candidate than for the smart one.