In the Land of White Boys Who Use the N-Word

Cam and Jason sounded impossible, but they were real — and somehow, they became my friends

Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.

Today, sans burning crosses and blatant epithets, racism is harder to put one’s finger on. But I know it when I feel it. —Danzy Senna, ‘The Mulatto Millennium’

You’re the nigger, baby, it isn’t me. —James Baldwin

Cam and Jason explained, in separate instances, how they got their White-boy cornrows. Older brother Jason, always high on some shit, a salesman of ill-gotten goods, peeking in the window, hopping the gate, made me nervous. His first cornrows were styled in the mid-’90s by Trisha, the Goose Creek varsity point guard’s girlfriend. My nigga was the definition of skittish, and he conceived two jumpy kids, never looked after them. I liked strong blunts, mind you, so I understood my habit funded his, but even his eighths of sour diesel were a cheat. He needed more money than retailers usually did, because his opiate addiction required it. Anything I bought from Jason included his Klonopin and Suboxone markup.

Younger brother Cam, also known as Juicebox, hadn’t tried to scam me out of $20 every time he could, which made him the most my nigga of all the bizarro White boys I met in The Ville. The “steely blue” or “ocean blue” eyes grocery store writers are so fond of describing, Cam had. He was redneck everything else, wiry strong, constantly scanning for women, often fixing on one trait.

I was beginning to understand the mythology of niggas in the South, and it leaked in directions and through cracks I hadn’t known.

“Yo, look at the sexy mom over there pushing the cart,” he would urge at Walmart. “I’d grab me some of them long nipples,” and then pantomime twiddling them with his thumb and pointer. Nasty shit, but worth a laugh.