Rocklin Minority Friendly? (Sacramento, Roseville, Folsom: home, established neighborhood, elementary school)

[daddiesgirl]

Hey everyone,

My wife and I have been looking at moving to either Roseville or Rocklin. We've been researching and looking for over four months now and are focusing on Rocklin at this point. I work at home and my wife works at a bank. My daughter is five and my son is three so we've researched the schools and area quite a bit. My concern at this point before we make the final decision is whether or not Rocklin or Roseville is really ethnic friendly? Looking at the population, Caucasians have the overwhelming majority and from what I've been reading, there seems to be some issues with racism.

Has anyone heard or experienced any problems? I love my kids dearly and that is our biggest concern. Thanks in advance.

[edwardius]

I doubt you will deal with much explicit racism in Rocklin. But if you live Rocklin versus other neighborhoods in the Sacramento region, you are less likely to see people who look like you or your kids in that neighborhood. You probably won't find much ethnic foods in the grocery stores and you might have to drive a while to find a speciality store selling goods that cater to people of your background. If you practices a non-traditional religion, you might have problems finding enough fellow believers to form a local church. In other parts of Sacramento, you are much more likely to find a mosque, synagogue or a church with services in Vietnamese, Korean, Hmong or Russian.

In that sense Rocklin is less welcoming for minorities than other parts of Sacramento. Would you describe that process as racism? I don't know. On the other hand the area is growing fairly rapidly. As more minority members move into the community, then suddenly there is enough minority members of the community to start supporting institutions that cater to the needs to the minority group.

A lot of Antelope was built out in the past 10 to 15 years. Now that neighborhood has lots of Russians, and Filipinos. West Placer County is growing fast enough where fairly soon, we are going to see new ethnic neighborhoods pop up there like what happened in Antelope.

[quasi888]

In either Rocklin or Roseville, you will see much more diversity in the newer (< 5 years old) neighborhoods, rather than the older, more established neighborhoods which tend to be more homogenous. I live in one of the newer areas of Roseville, and as I dropped off my son at his brand new elementary school the other day, I marveled at the diversity of the students/parents. It was a refreshing sight to me.

[TKN]

We recently moved to Rocklin about 1 year ago, and am a diverse family (husband is caucasian, and I am asian). We moved into a new part of town (Whitney Ranch), and our neighborhood is very diverse. I am happy to say that in my experience as a minority, I've never felt uncomfortable anywhere in and around Roseville/Rocklin, which was a big concern of ours when we moved from the bay area to here.

[PapaDoc313]

It depends on the area. Rocklin is probably predominantly caucasian. Like someone else said, I doubt you'll experience any outright racsism but I wouldn't expect to live amongst a large community of ethnic neighbors in Rocklin. If that's what you want I would look at Midtown/Downtown or Carmichael. Rocklin/Roseville/Folsom is also probably more conservative/Republican than other parts of Sac.

I believe that Roseville has a fairly large Mexican population and community (and some great Mexican restaraunts).

[zen_klown]

Politically Carmicheal is probably closer to Rocklin/Roseville/Folsom than to Midtown/Downtown. In California most political offices are gerrymandered to create safe districts for the incumbents. Generally Carmichael gets put into Republican leaning districts. The local congressman is Dan Lungren, the State Senator is Dave Cox and Roger Niello is the local assemblyman.

You can find a couple of burrito shops in Carmicheal and a couple of mexican butcher shops, but you don't have any mexican supermarkets like La Superior Supermercado, nor any of the Asian Supermarkets. The immigrants in Carmicheal are most likely slavic and those folks tend to Republican for social issues. There are quite a few 2nd or 3rd generation asians, but many of those seem fairly deracinated.

[PapaDoc313]

"Politically Carmicheal is probably closer to Rocklin/Roseville/Folsom than to Midtown/Downtown."

I don't know. Midtown/Downtown is probably by far the most liberal area in Sacramento. That's for sure. And I would say that Rocklin/Roseville/Folsom is farther right while Carmichael sits more in the middle. Though there may be conservatives in Carmichael, it's definitely an open and liberal enough town. It's small and most people just live there and work/go out outside of Carmichael and I would highly doubt you'd experience any trouble because of race there. That being said you probably won't experience any of that kind of trouble most places in Sac (though not all). R/R/F, I'd wager, is far less populated by minorities. I couldn't say that with 100% certainty, though. Like I said earlier I'm pretty sure there is a large Mexican community in Roseville.

"You can find a couple of burrito shops in Carmicheal and a couple of mexican butcher shops, but you don't have any mexican supermarkets like La Superior Supermercado..."

It may have closed down but I know there was a Mexican market on Fulton/Edison a few years ago. That area may actually be considered Sacramento but it's only 10 or so minutes outside of Carmichael, if it is.

"nor any of the Asian Supermarkets."

You're probably right. I know, though, that there are several Asian markets downtown, which is only 15-20 minutes outside of Carmichael.

I guess that is what has been nice about it. It is somewhat cheaper than other parts of Sac, fairly diverse, fairly safe, and only 20 or so minutes from everything around it. You could do a lot worse than Carmichael.