In the cafeteria of Harlem Renaissance High School on East 128th Street, students at four tables chatter over snacks before their morning classes. But 16-year-old Brooke Dominguez, a junior, eats with her mother and baby sister. In a room where most students are African-Americans, Dominguez also has the lightest skin: a faint trace of mocha, like the froth on a café au lait.

Reflecting the primarily black population of Harlem, more than 50 percent of Harlem Renaissance’s 231 students are African-American; nearly all the rest are Hispanic. Just one percent identify as “other” and their experiences as a tiny minority in uptown schools go largely overlooked.

Dominguez is one of two students in the school who identify themselves as being of mixed race.

Tiffany Brand, Dominguez’s mother and the secretary of the school parents’ association, is Caucasian — rosy-cheeked with dove grey eyes and hair the color of a wheat field. She left her native Nebraska on a whim, following a college roommate to New York City, where she met Brooke’s father, who is African-American and Hispanic.

The family lived on the Upper West Side, then moved to the Bronx. It wasn’t until Dominguez entered the sixth grade, at Frederick Douglass Academy II on West 114th Street, that she felt alienated because of her race.

“I was the one with the lightest skin in the school,” says Dominguez. “There was a welcome assembly where the principal talked about the student population — how many blacks and Hispanics there were. Then they were talking about those who were something else. They used me as an example.”

“I was shocked,” Brand says about her daughter’s being singled out on her first day of middle school. “Why would you talk about that at an assembly? The principal was rambling, talking about the school’s ethnic roots and it’s like he was telling all other races, ‘You get out.’”

Dominguez soon became withdrawn at school. “They would try to pick on me,” she says. “I was quiet and more go with the flow. Those kids were crazy. I didn’t like anyone in that school.” Classmates invited her to “go to the staircase” and cut class, she recalls; some sixth graders also smoked and drank alcohol. Dominguez responded by spending most of her time with neighborhood friends and focusing on her schoolwork.

Not only did she become ostracized for her diligence, but also for her color. “When we took a class picture, they’d point out I was the lightest one,” Dominguez says. “She don’t belong here,” a classmate pointed out with amusement.

“I never worried about putting her in a predominantly black school because I was never prejudiced,” her mother says. “If Frederick Douglass saw what was happening, he’d be rolling in his grave. I took her out of that school.”

“I imagine that white students, like any small minority in a large majority, will feel many of the same things,” says Bill Crain, a developmental psychologist at City College of New York in Hamilton Heights. ”Emotionally, there would be some problems. They’ll feel isolation and feel different.”

During forums at City College, where Crain, who is white, teaches classes that are mostly African-Americans, preference for the majority has been raised as an issue. “I’ve had white students complain that I wasn’t calling on them enough in class,” says Crain. “‘You’re just trying to favor the black kids,’” students would tell him.

“Those issues come up — favoritism,” Crain says. “All this occurs in the broader context in which whites have the power…I guess any minority feels more sensitive to discrimination.”

Minority students in high school may feel even more strain from racial tension. “In the teenage years, you’re worried about your identity,” Crain says. “I think it would be more acute and anxiety-producing for the teenager. There’s cliques — what clique are you going to get into if you’re a white kid?”

Despite the struggles, there can be benefits to being the ethnic odd one out in school. “They may feel different and odd for a while, but if they hang in there, they come out a mature, more advanced individual who has a broader perspective,” says Crain, who invokes a sociological study done decades ago by Robert Park. “His thesis was that those people who grow up in two different cultures become more intellectually and culturally sophisticated,” Crain said. “I would think that there could be some really positive effects to having two cultures.”

Perhaps reflecting the changing demographics of upper Manhattan, some schools are seeing a bit more ethnic and racial diversity. At Park East High School on East 105th Street, more than 60 percent of the 258 students are Hispanic and 30 percent are African-American. However,“this year, there are more nationalities,” says Xiomara Rodriguez, the parent coordinator. “There are two students that are Arabic and two Indians. We have four white students. Last year, there were just two.”

The unease a minority student experiences in a classroom where the faces — and culture — are unfamiliar can be temporary, Rodriguez says. “There are a few students that are assigned here by the district,” she says. “They come to the school with the mentality of transferring, but sometimes, they get used to the school and they change their minds and stay.”

Freshman Crystal Rand, for instance, was reluctant to enroll at Park East High after she completed middle school at a Catholic school in the Bronx. “I thought it wasn’t going to be the right school for me. I just felt scared,” says Rand, whose pale face and chestnut hair distinguish her in a hallway of darker students. “The school was kind of small for me. I wanted to be in a school that was big, where no one knew me.”

But the school’s size proved an advantage to Rand, especially with new ethnicities mottling the palette in recent years. “My old school was more Spanish but here, there’s a little more diversity,” says Rand, who considers two Asians and a Hispanic student her closest friends. “I remember when I first came to Harlem in summer camp, I was probably 10 years old at the time. It was kind of hard because people were still kind of racist. But here, everybody knows you for who you are — race and everything.”

David Deng, 17, a senior who is Chinese, says: “Everyone saw me and, ‘Oh, it’s the Asian kid.’” He selected Park East High, after graduating from a middle school in Grammercy Park, because of its A grade from the Department of Education.

“My first friend here, who’s Dominican, came up to me on the second day and we’re best friends now,” he says. “Freshman year, I was the only Asian here. It went from being Puerto Rican, Dominican and black to more whites and Asians, like a normal high school in New York City.”

Smiling widely, Rand adds, “Since I’ve been here, I’ve gotten into hip-hop and all that. It’s influenced the way I speak. I speak with a bit more slang than I used to.”

Deng agrees. “I now know cultures of Dominicans and Puerto Ricans — what they do, eat, and all that fun stuff like rap and bachata, the Spanish dance music they’re always talking about.” As a result of his experience, entering one of the predominantly white colleges he applied to is less daunting. “I’ll get used to it,” he says. “Asians are still a minority but because of this school, I can make friends with every different race — people I wouldn’t even talk to when I was in middle school.”

Such people might include Shane De la Cruz, a dark-skinned Dominican senior, who wasn’t exposed to ethnicities other than black or Hispanic when he began high school at Park East. But by his senior year, his group of mostly Dominican friends now includes Deng. Other Asian students tend to cling toone another, De la Cruz said, ” but he isn’t how the other Asians are. He was talking, joking around. I’m the type of guy who’s always playing around so I started talking to him. I wouldn’t say we’re good friends but we’re friends.”

At Frederick Douglass Academy II, cultures are also converging. Two years ago, Owei Owusu-Afriyie replaced the principal in charge when Brooke Dominguez was the resident “white girl” amid an African-American majority.

“You know, there’s a reality for students and then there’s the adult perception of the students’ reality,” Afriyie says, told of the former student’s experience. “I may not perceive it, but that doesn’t mean that that’s not a tension that a child feels.”

But with a recent influx of West Africans and the emergence of new minorities among the school’s 419 students, Afriyie has given ethnic integration more emphasis. He introduced a buddy system for new students from different cultures and launched Summer Bridge, a three-week program to foster unity among incoming students.

“They build what we call a scholar identity,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you’re denying where you’re coming from, but you’re participating with others in the creation of another type of experience — what it means to be an FDA II scholar.

“A lot of times, the students’ interactions with cultures is via TV, not face to face,” he points out. “The whole idea of coming to school is to learn about other people and interact with people of different cultures. That’s one thing we’ve been working on — having more celebrations of diversity in this school.”

Afriyie speculates that technology has made students more sophisticated about classmates outside their own ethnicities. “It’s the Facebook culture,” he says. “Social media closes the gap of what children are liking in other countries and what children are liking here. They have a common entry point that’s helping bridge culture.”

As gentrification increases uptown, the integration of minorities into predominantly black or Hispanic schools is likely to increase cultural interplay.

“There are more white people coming in,” says Yvette McKenzie, the parent coordinator at Frederick Douglass Academy in West Harlem. “This location is predominantly black until recently. People have come to our school because it’s a safe place. We don’t have metal detectors or bars on the windows. We also have AP classes in the ninth grade so, of course, parents like their kids to come here.”

Afriyie agrees. “The neighborhood’s changing,” he says. “You’re having a lot of different things that are going to change the ethnic makeup of the school. I think that’s only going to be a good thing.”