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Hello, My family is looking to move to the Rockhill or Fortmill area. My husband is Filipino and my daughter looks a lot like him. He keeps getting warned not to move to SC because him and my daughter will experience racism towards them. This is super concerning to me, mostly for my 8 year old. Does anyone have any thoughts or personal experience with this?
Thank you!!
I don't have specific experience with the Rock Hill area; that's about an hour and a half from me here in Sumter. We've only been through that area on the way to Charlotte or once when we went to a dealership there to get a car. I haven't seen too much anti-Filipino sentiment here in SC though, outside of a few instances. My wife and daughter are Filipino and there is a decent-sized community here in Sumter because of the base and the school district, so we interact with quite a few families and go out shopping around the state in a group to the outlet malls or whatever, that kind of behavior. I'm sure that when a large group of Filipinos are walking through a store and all of them are loudly speaking Tagalog, there might be a few people thinking to themselves 'Speak English why don't you?' I've noticed a few ugly glares from older people in those kind of situations. Fortunately no one has ever made any comment on it and I've never had to get involved.
There is one Korean restaurant in the state that we went to in a large group where we were ignored the whole time, and it felt kind of like they were looking down their noses a bit at our table. All of the Koreans that came in got speedy service and the servers were extremely friendly with them, the owners went over to their table to talk, that kind of thing. That could be chalked up to those customers maybe being regulars. We shouldn't have been left at the table with no drinks, no refills when our drinks were empty, no plates being cleared, and other things. I wondered maybe if it wasn't so much that they had something against Filipinos as much as maybe anyone who wasn't Korean would have gotten poor service? I refuse to go back regardless.
My wife needed to go to a specific DMV an hour away once for her road exam. At the time this was the closest DMV that could handle licenses for non-citizens. She didn't even make it out of the parking lot before she failed the test. She got to a stop-sign that left the parking lot, stopped, looked both ways, and began to pull onto the road. The person administering the test told her to turn around and go back, that she failed because she ran the stop sign. My wife swore to me that she came to a complete noticeable stop and didn't roll through. When she told all of the Filipinos she knows in town about the situation, those that had been to that DMV and had that same instructor had all failed. Stories I heard were that the failures, sometimes multiple times for the same person, were all for minor things or things that they said they had done right or had not done wrong. The going theory amongst the group that my wife runs with is that specific instructor is racist. I can't say with 100% certainty that he is but it sounds like it is definitely a possibility.
Neither of those things happened in Rock Hill though, so those specific things shouldn't be an issue for your family. I don't know what sized-community that area has of a Filipino population but I have to imagine that it is pretty decent given its proximity to a city like Charlotte. A lot of Filipino teachers seem to land jobs at school districts here in SC too which leads to cities having larger numbers of Filipinos. You'll be in a better location than I am for things like Asian markets too, since you are so much closer to Charlotte than I am even just to Columbia. The Super G Mart in Charlotte is amazing; I wish I could go more often than I do. And then there are so many other things that would be nice to have close to you. For instance you will have a Best Buy in Rock Hill, as well half an hour away in Charlotte. I have to drive an hour to get to a Best Buy, Barnes and Noble, Target, Sam's Club or Costco, and more. Charlotte has the South Park Mall, great eating, great venues for concerts and shows... It should be pretty nice living up there; I'm definitely envious of that location compared to my own. I wish you and your family luck!
Hello, My family is looking to move to the Rockhill or Fortmill area. My husband is Filipino and my daughter looks a lot like him. He keeps getting warned not to move to SC because him and my daughter will experience racism towards them. This is super concerning to me, mostly for my 8 year old. Does anyone have any thoughts or personal experience with this?
Thank you!!
Where are you moving from and who told your husband this? Pure garbage!
Asian people and companies have made big investments in SC. They are certainly welcomed here!
Thank you all so much for your input! Feel so much better, we are leaving tomorrow to check out the area.
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