Brother, can you spare a line?

"I know I'm a black man in the wrong neighborhood, but I'm a good guy." How's that for an opening statement?
It was the third time I had encountered the guy; the first was in a parking lot off Snelling Avenue, about a year earlier. He pulled up in a construction van, and talked through the driver's window. The second was closer to my apartment building, when I had stepped out for some air. Now, this, in front of a convenience store a few blocks from home. I didn't recognize him until it was too late.
"Could you help me out? I smashed my thumb, and need to get to a clinic" he said. "There's a good clinic by the Metrodome, right? That's in Minneapolis, right?" He showed me the same, crooked, disfigured thumb for the third time. Nothing like a medical abnormality to arouse sympathies. I told him that we had already been through the same routine, and encouraged him to get some new material. And a map.
He hadn't changed at all, the same jeans, jacket, bit of tape on the mashed digit. His routine was so well choreographed I wondered if he rehearsed in front of a mirror.
The racist assumption pissed me off, and I told him so. "Man, I don't care if you're black, red, green, whatever. If you need a few bucks, drop the song and dance and I'll be more likely to help you out," I said. This brought him back to earth, and he dropped the hospital schtick. I gave him two dollars, at which point he asked for another fifty-cents. He was beginning to try my patience, and I walked away. I'm sure I'll see him again, in another year.