Growing Latino Population Redefines Small Town : NPR: Siler City, N.C., used to be the kind of town where almost everyone, black and white, had roots going back a century or two.
Characters on The Andy Griffith Show mentioned Siler City, and the actress who played Aunt Bee even retired there because it reminded her of Mayberry. It was just about the last place a Spanish-speaking immigrant was likely to land. That started to change in the 1990s. Today, thanks to chicken-processing jobs that no one else wants, Siler City is about half Latino.
Siler City is a traditional Southern sports town, long proud of its football and basketball teams. But because of the influx of Latino students, the town's high school added soccer teams a few years ago. The girls' team — the Lady Jets — is about half Latino and half white.
'But the funny thing is, when you go to the soccer games, none of their parents speak English,' soccer mom Jenny Pleasants says. Pleasants is white and a native North Carolinian. She says her daughter gets along well with her Latina teammates, but the parents have a different relationship.
'So they all sit on one side and we all sit on the other,' Pleasants says. 'How do you sit next to someone and tell them your kid's playing really good when half the time you can't even pronounce the name and they don't understand anything you're saying?'
