This paper explores how adolescent Latinos frequenting a multi-ethnic North Carolina middle school, use grammatical features of African American English (AAE), yet a notably different sociolinguistic patterning. Ethnographic data elucidate the linguistic data in three fields: (1) gender differences in use of AAE features; (2) the abundant use of AAE by one gang-connected student; and (3) the racial intricacies in the ethnic ‘Latino' category.