After I brushed him off, a beggar on Dearborn called me “you cheap Chinese.” How should someone respond to that? (Besides “fuck you, you lazy-ass racist,” my coarse, off-the-cuff response.) It’s frankly hard to give a damn about poor people when even a few are so appallingly abusive. Sure, I give money to the food bank and Red Cross, but beggars don’t care. (One even told me so, saying “well, you didn’t give me any money.”) And, of course, why did my race get singled out for ridicule? The veneer of “proxy white privilege” can be awfully thin sometimes…