Lord, Can You Please Help a Nigga Out

Book excerpt: My granddaddy used to say, "There ain't no such thing as a Nigga. Niggas are a figment of the imagination; a mental construct. An idea created to keep men down. A way of thinking that only existed in a man's mind." My granddaddy also picked his lottery numbers from a book of dreams that he kept under his bed. If he had a dream and saw a white rabbit hopping across a freshly cut lawn on Labor Day it meant you played numbers 572. If the dream was him riding on a bus uptown and a guy wearing a purple suit with a red feather in his hat, gets on the bus with exact change, and ask if the bus is heading downtown, you played 769. So we didn't take what granddaddy said too seriously. Besides I live in the hood, and in the hood "niggas" were everywhere.