I usually don’t give money to beggars. There were lots of them around where I grew up, and when I was small I sometimes saw my father turn down their requests for money with an offer to buy them food. I never saw one accept the offering. Once, when I was a teenager, someone asked me for spare change as I was walking into a Taco Bell, and I gave him none, but I walked out with some food for him a few moments later. He looked at me disgustedly and continued collecting soda cans from a dumpster.

Today I left school on my way to a doctor’s appointment for which I had to fast. It was hot and muggy and I had the windows down. I haven’t seen many beggars in Mississippi but when I stopped at a light in downtown Jackson, hungry and tired, a guy on the curb started to shout his begging at the windows of each of the stopped cars in turn. When he got to mine and I didn’t immediately respond, he belligerently shouted, “White boy ain’t help no nigger,” and waved me away angrily. I told him I might help if he weren’t such an asshole. Maybe that was rash.