THEY WERE WHITE, BLACK, AND HISPANIC--AND THE BEST OF FRIENDS.

But when they hit high school, something changed

Back in eighth grade, Kelly Regan, Aqeelah Mateen, and Johanna Perez-Fox spent New Year's Eve at Johanna's house, swing-dancing until they fell down laughing, banging pots and pans, watching the midnight fireworks over the trees in the park at the center of town.

They had been a tight threesome all through Maplewood, New Jersey, Middle School--Kelly, tall, coltish Irish Catholic; Aqeelah, small, earnest African-American Muslim; and Johanna, light coffee-colored, half Jewish and half Puerto Rican, and famous for knowing just about everyone.

It had been a great night, they agreed, a whole lot simpler than Johanna's birthday party three nights before. Johanna had invited all their friends, black and white. But they didn't mix much.

"The black kids stayed down in the basement and danced, and the white kids went outside on the stoop and talked," Johanna says. "I went out and said, `Why don't you guys come downstairs?' and they said they didn't want to, that they just wanted to talk out there. It was just split up, like two parties."

The same thing had happened when Kelly held a back-to-school party a few months earlier. "It was so stressful," Kelly remembers. "There I was, the hostess, and I couldn't get everybody together."

This year, the girls started high school, and with the difficulty of mixing their black and white friends, none of the three even tried a birthday party.

It happens everywhere, in the confusion of adolescence and the yearning for identity, when the most important thing in life is choosing a group and fitting in: Black kids and white kids come apart. They move into separate worlds. Friendships ebb and end.

It happens everywhere, but what is striking is that it happens even here. In a nation where most schools are increasingly segregated, the South Orange-Maplewood district is extraordinarily mixed. Half black and half white, it is the kind of place where people of both races talk a lot about the virtues of diversity and worry a lot about white flight, where hundreds turn out to discuss the book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

But even here, as if pulled by internal magnets, black and white children begin to separate at sixth grade. These are kids who walked to school together, learned to read together, slept over at each other's houses. Despite all the personal history, all the community goodwill, race divides them as they grow up. As racial consciousness develops--and the practice of grouping students by perceived ability sends them on diverging academic paths--a racial fault line defines their world.

When they began high school, Kelly, Johanna, and Aqeelah had managed to be exceptions, sticking together even as the world around them divided along racial lines. But where their friendship would go was hard to predict.

DIFFERENT BUT INSEPARABLE

On her first day at Columbia High School, Kelly took a seat in homeroom and introduced herself to the black student at the next desk.

"I was trying to be friendly," she explains. "But he answered in like one word, and looked away. I think he just thought I was a normal white person, and that's all he saw."

She certainly looks like a normal white person, with her pale skin and straight brown hair. But in middle school, she had joined Aqeelah and Johanna at Martin Luther King Association meetings; there had been only a handful of white girls. Kelly never felt out of place. "Some people say I'm ghetto," she says, shrugging. "I don't care."

Kelly always had a mixed group of friends, and since the middle of eighth grade, she had been dating a mixed-race classmate, Jared Watts. But she knew it would be harder to make black friends once she entered ninth grade. "It's not because of the person I am," she says, "it's just how it is."

Johanna is intensely sociable. As she sees it, her mixed background gives her a choice of racial identity and access to everybody. "I like that I can go both ways," she says. Johanna carries a certain otherness among her black friends. "If they say something about white people, they'll always say, `Oh, sorry, Johanna,'" she says. "I think it's good. It makes them more aware of their stereotypes."

Still, she was put off when a new black friend asked what race she was: "I told him I'm half white and half Puerto Rican, and he said, `But you act black.' I told him you can't act like a race, I hate that idea. He defended it, though. He said I would have a point if he'd said African-American, because that's a race, but black is a way of acting. I've thought about it, and I think he's right."

ACTING BLACK, ACTING WHITE

For Aqeelah, the issue of acting black has become a persistent irritant. Aqeelah lives with her mother in a mostly black section of Maplewood. She also sees a lot of her father, and often goes with him to the Newark mosque where he is an imam. But she gets constant criticism from black friends who say she acts too white.

After school one day, Aqeelah and two other black girls were running down the hall when one of them accidentally knocked a corkboard off the wall. Aqeelah told her to pick it up, but the girl kept going.

"What's the matter with you?" Aqeelah said. "You knocked it over, you pick it up."

"Why do you have to be like a white person?" her friend asked. "Just leave it here." But Aqeelah picked it up.

"There's stuff like that all the time, and it gets on my nerves," she says. "I'm too white to be black and I'm too black to be white. And if I'm talking to a white boy, a black kid walks by and says, `Oh, there's Aqeelah, she likes white boys.' In class, these Caucasian boys I've been friends with for years say hi, and then the next thing they say is, `Yo, Aqeelah, what up?' as if I won't understand them unless they use that kind of slang, even though they know I don't talk like that. Last year, this stuff didn't bother me, but now it does, because some of the African-American kids, joking around, say I'm an oreo."

THE DRIFT

Johannah and Aqeelah met in kindergarten and have been friends from Day 1. Kelly joined the group in fifth grade. At the end of middle school, the three were nominated for the yearbook as class "best friends." And while they saw their classmates dividing along racial lines, they tried to ignore it. "In middle school, I didn't want to be aware of the separation," Kelly says. "I didn't see why it had to happen." Most young people here seem to accept it as inevitable. It's just how it is, they say, it just happens, it's just easier to be with your own kind.

When Sierre Monk, who is black, graduated from elementary school, she had friends of all races. But by eighth grade, she had moved away from the whites and closer to the blacks, a process she sometimes refers to as "my drift," as in, "After my drift I began to notice more how the black kids talk differently from the white kids."

There is a consensus among her schoolmates that the split is mostly, although hardly exclusively, a matter of blacks pulling away.

Marian Flaxman, a white girl in Sierre's homeroom, puts it this way: "You know, you come to a new school and you're all little and scared, and everybody's looking for a way to fit in, for people to like them. We were all just kids. And then a few black kids begin thinking, `Hey, we're black kids.' I think the white kids feel like they're white because the black kids feel like they're black."

Sierre does not really disagree: "Everybody gets along, but I think the white kids are more friendly toward black or interracial kids, and the black kids aren't as interested back, just because of stupid stereotypical stuff like music and style."

What they cannot quite articulate, though, is how much the divide owes to their growing awareness of the larger society, to negative messages about race, violence, and academic success. They may not connect the dots, but that sensitivity makes them intensely alert to slights from friends of another race, likely to pull away at even a hint of rejection.

Marian Flaxman went to a mostly black preschool, and several black friends from those days remain classmates. But, she says, it has been years since she has visited a black friend's home. "Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who remembers that we used to be friends," she says.

Diane Hughes, a New York University psychology professor who lives in South Orange, has studied the changing friendships of children here. In the first year of middle school, she found, black children were only half as likely as they had been two years earlier to name a white child as a best friend. Whites had fewer black friends to start with, but their friendships changed less. But blacks and whites, on reaching middle school, were only half as likely as third-graders to say they had recently invited a friend of a different race to their home.

SEPARATE, NOT EQUAL

By high school, most students are acutely aware of the signposts of the two coexisting cultures. Popular wisdom has it that the black kids dominate football and basketball, the white kids soccer, softball, and lacrosse. Black kids throw big dance parties in rented spaces; white parties are more often in people's homes, with a lot of drinking. Black kids listen to hip-hop or rhythm and blues; white kids favor rock stations. Even though the two cultures are in constant, casual contact--and a few students cross easily back and forth--in the end, they are quite separate.

Whenever people talk about race and school, the elephant in the room--rarely mentioned, impossible to ignore --is the racial imbalance that appears when tracking, grouping students by ability, begins. Almost all American school districts start tracking sometime before high school. And when they do, white students are far more likely than black students to be placed in higher-level classes, based on test scores and teacher recommendations.

Nationwide, by any measure of academic performance, be it grades, tests, or graduation rates, whites on average do better than blacks. To some extent, it is a matter of differences in parents' income and education. But the gap remains even when those differences are factored out, even in places like South Orange-Maplewood.

Experts have no simple explanation, citing parents' attitudes, low expectations of mostly white teachers, and negative pressure from black students who believe that doing well isn't cool, that smart is white and street is black.

It can be a vicious circle--and a powerful influence on friendships.

Inevitably, as students notice that honors classes are mostly white and lower-level classes mostly black, they develop a corrosive sense that behaving like honor students is "acting white," while "acting black" demands that they emulate the lower-level students. Little wonder that sixth grade, when tracking starts in South Orange-Maplewood, is also when many interracial friendships unravel.

THE HONORS GAP

"It sometimes bothers me to see how many of my African-American friends aren't in the higher-level classes, how they try to be cool around their friends by acting up and trying to be silly and getting in fights," says Sierre, who this year moved up to honors in everything but math. "A lot of them just aren't trying. They're my friends, but I look at them and think, `Why can't you just be cool and do your work?'"

Kelly, Johanna, and Aqeelah are not academic superstars, but all three are in mostly honors classes. "You really see the difference when you're not in honors," says Kelly, who is in middle-level English. "In middle level, there aren't so many white kids, and whenever you break into groups, people stick with their own race."

The contrasts are stark. In Aqeelah's mostly white honors history class, the students argue passionately about the nature of man as they compare Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. But when the bell rings, the class that arrives is an all-black, basic skills class that will spend the period learning fundamental library skills.

Aqeelah had always been the strongest student of the three, the only one in a special math class, one rung above honors. But by winter, she was getting disappointing grades, especially in history, and beginning to worry about being moved down a level. Math was not going so well either.

And her life was changing in other ways. Johanna and Kelly were still tight, getting together almost every weekend. But Aqeelah had no classes with either of them, and saw less of them outside of school, too. Instead, she talked most to a black girl, a longtime family friend. It was partly logistics: Aqeelah ran into her daily at sixth period and after school, at her locker.

"I don't know why I don't call Johanna or Kelly," she says. "They'll always have a place in my heart, but not so much physically in my life these days."

TALKING ABOUT RACE

Family Ties

RICHARD SIMMONS: My father was black to the core, so I consider myself black, too. But my mother's Korean, so people also see something in my face that's Asian. It's not that I reject my Korean side, it just isn't a big part of my life. But I've been learning about Korea on my own lately.

ALISA SIMMONS: When people look at me, they tend to fill in the blank with whatever they're comfortable with and assume I'm Asian.

Sometimes I'll wear my hair in little knots and put on some ratty jeans, then people perceive me as black. I'll walk into a store and I'm followed. But if I walk into a store with my hair straight, people are more than happy to give me service.

Hometown Homeboys

JORDAN BARAM: I used to think that the playing field was pretty level, that anyone could get ahead if they worked hard, but the more I've heard African Americans talk about their lives, the more I've come to see how it's not level at all.

ARI ONUGHA: No one looking at me would ever think I'm in Advanced Placement. Most of the black kids in the honors classes identify with white culture. I'm more comfortable in black culture, with kids who dress like me and talk like me and listen to the same music I do.

Mixed Doubles

SHANE VAVERA: Race doesn't matter to me. I mean, I'm half Iranian. But yeah, Asian women, I think they're more exotic. It's not just like Plain Jane.

AMILY MAK: I'd never really dated a white guy. My parents encouraged me to date who I wanted, but I was just hanging out with the Asian community, so I dated Asian guys, who are more traditional. They expect you to clean house and stuff. I think it's hard for them to see a girl who wants to go out and do stuff, not just start a family.

NOUDENG SY: I used to think guys wouldn't want to date Asian girls. But nowadays, Asian women are in. I hear all this stuff about how Asian women are more exotic-looking, and a lot of guys want that.

CHRIS COLVIN: A few generations ago, it would've been awkward, but now there are lots of multicultural kids.

Attitude Watch

You know you're not a racist, right? But how about that friend across town--or across the country? A survey by The New York Times suggests you're not so sure about him.

The poll found that most whites and blacks believe that race relations in the U.S. are generally good, and have improved since the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

Big majorities (88 percent of whites and 82 percent of blacks) thought race relations were good in their own neighborhoods. But the farther from home respondents looked, the bleaker the picture. Thirty percent of whites and 40 percent of blacks said race relations in the nation as a whole are generally bad. About the same percentage of blacks think race relations haven't improved since the 1960s.

The poll also found areas where the two races see things differently. Most whites think blacks and whites have an equal chance to get ahead, while 57 percent of blacks say whites still have an advantage; 76 percent of blacks favor affirmative action, while whites were evenly divided.

At right, poll results on four key questions.

1. THE DIFFERENCE RACE MAKES

Who has a better chance of getting ahead in today's society--white people or black people? Or do they both have about an equal chance of getting ahead?

         WHITE    BLACK
         PEOPLE   PEOPLE   EQUAL

WHITES
SAY:      32%       6%      58%

BLACKS
SAY:      57%       1%      39%

2. HAVE THINGS IMPROVED?

Some people say that since the 1960s there has been a lot of real progress in getting rid of racial discrimination against blacks. Others say that there hasn't been much real progress for blacks over that time. Which do you agree with more? Would you say there's been a lot of real progress getting rid of racial discrimination or hasn't there been much real progress?

                    NO REAL
         PROGRESS   PROGRESS

WHITES
SAY:       78%        18%

BLACKS
SAY:       58%        39%

3. UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

Do you personally know any white people who dislike blacks?

         YES   NO

WHITES
SAY:     57%   42%

BLACKS
SAY:     55%   43%

Do you personally know any black people who dislike whites?

         YES   NO

WHITES
SAY:     31%   68%

BLACKS
SAY:     67%   32%

4. WHO LIVES WHERE

About how many of the people who live in the immediate area around your home are black--none, a few, about half, or almost all?

         NONE   A FEW   ABOUT   ALMOST
                        HALF     ALL

WHITES
SAY:     25%    60%     12%      2%

BLACKS
SAY:     3%     21%     31%      45%

NOTE: PERCENTAGE DO NOT ADD UP TO 100 BECAUSE RESPONDENTS WHO DID NOT KNOW OR HAD NO ANSWER ARE NOT INCLUDED.

FOR THIS POLL, THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERVIEWED 934 BLACKS AND 1,107 WHITES THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY BY TELEPHONE BETWEEN JUNE 21 AND JUNE 29, 2000.

In "Talking About Race," the interviews for "Family Ties" and "Mixed Doubles" are by EMILY NUSSBAUM, and those for "Hometown Homeboys" are by TAMAR LEWIN.

Friends of Different Races Who Grew Apart as Teens

FOCUS: As Racial Consciousness Develops, Teens Split Along Racial Lines

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand the racial divide in America, specifically how young people, as they begin to seek their own identities, split along racial lines.

Discussion Questions:

* How would you define racial consciousness?

* What's the difference between "black" style and "white" style?

* During the 1960s, opponents of civil rights laws prohibiting racial segregation often argued that such laws were worthless because they could not make people love each other. Do ongoing racial divisions in the U.S. lend weight to that argument? Is the country a better place because those laws were passed?

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

Class Discussion: Do students know what racial consciousness means? What factors in a person's development contribute to a sense of racial consciousness? Does it follow that being a proud member of one race means that one need disdain people of other races?

Johanna Perez-Fox says her black friends sometimes make stereotypical comments about whites. Even if students know the definition, have them look up stereotype in a dictionary. Then discuss whether it is rational to regard members of any group as if they were all the same.

Have students come to grips with stereotypes by writing one-word descriptions of images that come to mind when you name various countries, occupations, or other categories of your choosing.

Why do people stereotype? Is it just an easy way to evaluate? Perez-Fox implies that there is a benefit to making her friends aware of their stereotypes. What benefit might that be?

Discuss young people's "growing awareness of the larger society" and "negative messages about race" (page 11). Can students cite examples of negative images about race? Do the news media cite race in their reporting? Are race and differences between races implied in advertising, entertainment, and sports?

Resource: Do students know what "acting black" or "acting white" means? Lena Williams, an African-American reporter for The New York Times, has written a new book: It's the Little Things: The Everyday Interactions That Get Under the Skin of Blacks and Whites; Harcourt, 268 pages.

This article os part of the series "How Race Is Lived in America," the result of a yearlong examination of race relations by team of New York Times reporters. For the entire series, plus audio and video extras, go to UPFRONT ONLINE.

TAMAR LEWIN is a national correspondent for The Times, based in New York.