NEW YORK TIMES

December 31, 2006

Hispanic Teenagers Join Southern Mainstream

By RACHEL L. SWARNS

PEARSON, Ga. — The buzzer blares and the students pour into the hallways — bubble gum snapping, locker doors slamming — as the young man of the moment saunters through the admiring crowd at Atkinson County High School.

He is thin and wiry with a whisper of a mustache and a taste for enormous Hollywood-style sunglasses. Like most popular boys, he receives flurries of party invitations and whispered confidences from pretty girls. Like other students, he juggles homework and dreams of becoming a singing sensation. In fact, in this tiny town, the most remarkable thing about him is his name, Frankie Ruiz.

In October, Frankie and a classmate, Kristen Galarza, made local history when they were named homecoming king and queen, the first time Hispanics won both titles in the same year. The coronation stirred astonishment, jubilation and some outrage in this Southern town, which is being transformed by Latino migration and is still struggling to adapt to its evolving ethnic identity.

While Hispanics now account for more than 20 percent of the population here, they still live mostly on the margins of society, largely invisible in local politics and the upper echelons of business. As adults, Hispanics, blacks and whites rarely mix socially.

But in the bustling classrooms of Atkinson High, Hispanic teenagers are slowly but steadily integrating into student life. The transition is sometimes awkward and painful, but young people here are casually challenging the traditional social hierarchy in ways once unimaginable.

As Hispanic migrant and factory workers, Frankie’s relatives have long been considered outsiders. But Frankie, the American-born son of a Mexican father and a Puerto Rican mother, is the ultimate insider at Atkinson High.

“Everyone knows me,” said Frankie, 17, an affable joker who swings easily between English and Spanish and savors cornbread as much as tortillas. “I live in both worlds.”

Atkinson High might seem an unlikely laboratory for ethnic mixing. The school, which opened in 1955, barred blacks until 1970. In 1994, it was only 4 percent Hispanic, state statistics show, while now the population of 514 students is 50 percent white, 26 percent Hispanic and 22 percent black. Hispanic and black students wear their school colors, red and white, as proudly as their white classmates do.

Faculty members at Atkinson High, which is led by Paul Daniel, the principal, marvel at the changes.

“I’ve never taught at a school where Hispanics were on the football team or the cheerleading squad,” said Edwin Collins, a Spanish teacher.

“I have girls with Hispanic boyfriends and boys who wish they had Hispanic girlfriends,” said Mr. Collins, who has taught for nearly 20 years. “It’s different from anything I’ve ever seen.”

There is Jose Rodriguez, a linebacker and a captain of the football team, who helped his fellow players reach the playoffs in November. Leon Martinez and Azucena Ponce are among the growing number of Hispanic students on the honor roll.

And then there is Cecilia Diaz, a sophomore who recently invited white and black friends to her quinceañera, the traditional 15th birthday celebration of a Hispanic girl’s passage into womanhood. To her family’s surprise, the students celebrated almost as much as the Mexican guests.

Frankie, who prides himself on his glittering diamond earrings and pristine white Nikes, dates black, white and Hispanic girls alike. He says his dating has raised eyebrows, but not tensions, perhaps because Hispanics here are viewed as occupying a racial space somewhere between blacks and whites.

“They were like, ‘You go out with black people?’ ” Frankie said, describing the response to a former girlfriend. “And I was like, ‘Yeah. What’s the big deal?’ ”

After all, he was born in Georgia, in neighboring Coffee County, and has attended public schools with their mix of black, white and Hispanic students for most of his life. He cannot imagine restricting himself to one group of friends.

So in Earth Science class one recent morning, he joshed with black classmates, who teased that he was stealing his sense of style from them. (His haircut that day included two stars etched on one side of his head.) Minutes later, he was in the hallway, comforting a white friend upset with a teacher and grinning for photos with Hispanic friends.

Zack Harper, a white senior, said more and more teenagers were socializing regardless of race or ethnicity. “Everyone talks and mingles here,” said Zack, who has invited Frankie to his house and has visited Frankie’s home.

But the increased presence of Hispanic students has not come without tension. Several Hispanic teenagers have been suspended for involvement in gang activity, school officials say.

Some students still offend their Hispanic classmates with clumsy or hostile remarks. (Frankie said one student asked him, “Do Mexicans eat cats and dogs?” Another asked, “Do your parents sell drugs?”)

In response to such comments, some Hispanic teenagers retreat into the comfort of ethnic solidarity. Other students do the same. In the cafeteria, Hispanics, blacks and whites still sit mostly in separate groups as they huddle over trays of steak nuggets and canned peaches.

And while some cheered Frankie and Kristen’s homecoming victory, others feared it signaled that Mexican immigrants were beginning to dominate town life.

“Everybody in school likes them, so some people were happy,” said Brittany Young, a white junior, describing the reactions of white residents to the homecoming vote.

“But others were just like, ‘Oh my God, no, they didn’t just win,’ ” she said. Brittany said some worried there might not be another white homecoming king and queen at Atkinson High, given the growing number of Hispanic students.

Sydney Taylor, a black senior who was a contender for homecoming king, said he thought the voting was manipulated to ensure the victory of two Hispanic students. He said he did not believe that blacks and whites would offer enough support for Frankie and Kristen to win. He said he had no proof; the faculty, after all, tallies the student votes. But his outspoken anger over the subject drove a wedge between Sydney and Frankie, who stopped speaking for weeks.

“I really didn’t pay no mind to it,” Frankie said. “It doesn’t bother me.”

But at times, Frankie cannot help but feel the distance between his life and those of his Southern friends, even as they all cheer the football team, flit back and forth from one another’s homes and wrestle with Newton’s law of gravitation.

Most of his white friends have parents with college degrees and big houses. Frankie lives in a mobile home with two sisters and his mother, who never completed high school.

One of his best friends has a BMW, while his family has yet to replace his Mitsubishi Galant since the motor blew out while he was speeding last summer.

He tries to meld both worlds, but that can prove awkward. When he invites his Southern friends to Hispanic parties, they often stand uneasily on the sidelines, unfamiliar with reggaetón, the blend of reggae, rap and Latin rhythms that gets Frankie moving on the dance floor.

And he occasionally feels out of place when he is the lone Hispanic in the crowd. “You feel kind of nervous,” Frankie said. “You wonder, ‘What do they really think of me?’ ”

So he keeps all of his friends close, but his Hispanic friends closer, including the homecoming queen, Kristen, who did not respond to requests for an interview.

“I like hanging out with everybody,” Frankie said. “But I guess I still feel more comfortable around Hispanic people.”

In part, that is because he said he still feels like Hispanic teenagers often struggle harder than others.

If he graduates as expected in the spring, he will be the first in his family to complete high school. Many of his friends have already abandoned that goal. Of the 15 Hispanic friends who started high school with him, only 5 remain, he said. The rest dropped out to help support their families or simply gave up.

In 2004, 47 percent of the Hispanic seniors graduated from Atkinson High, compared with 62 percent of whites and 36 percent of blacks, state statistics show.

Frankie dreams of joining the Navy or going to college to become a fashion designer or hitting the big time as a reggaetón performer. Making it, he says, will be much harder without a diploma.

So he studies to get decent grades, ignores clumsy remarks about Hispanics and steers clear of clothing styles favored by Hispanic gangs to avoid unwanted attention from watchful teachers or police officers. He wants to make people feel good, he says, not to make waves.

So when his classmate Sydney started talking again, Frankie laughed and shrugged off weeks of tension. Soon they were chatting, and Sydney was swinging by the record store where Frankie works after school to check out the hottest CDs.

“We don’t always share a lot of common stuff,” Frankie said of his black and white friends, “but we all still hang.”