A Peaceful Rant

My best friend in college was a man of another race. I adored him like a brother, still do.

And one time, way back when, I was getting divorced and came to visit him. We went out for beers and as usual got to talking about life. And it happened to be when a rapper (I cannot remember who--this was a long time ago) advocated gunning down cops in the 'hood. The O.J. Simpson case was raging. And my friend and I ended up talking about race in America. And I had a simplistic, "Why can't we all get along" mentality. That's who I am. I just want peace. I, especially, was bothered by violent lyrics and writing. I didn't want violent songs recorded. At the least I wanted a warning label. And my friend, not in so many words, called me an idiot.

And he was right. Only I didn't know it yet. That would take me a while.

At the time, I had a child. He didn't. That's a big divide. I wanted to protect my child from hearing about cop killers.

And my friend, working an ugly crime beat as a reporter for the Miami Herald, told me "his" people's reality was the killing cops was a viable option in certain situations.

I thought he was insane.

On the way home that night, white woman in an African-American man's car driving into one of the wealthiest enclaves in Florida, where my parents lived, we were stopped by a white cop. He was nasty. Not a little nasty. A lot nasty. We were not speeding. We were sitting in front of an ocean condo in a car and my friend was giving me my birthday present--a book by Terry McMillan. The cop asked for our identification, flashlight in our eyes so close we really couldn't see. We refused and asked for his badge number. He called for back-up--a car that blocked us in. From there it got worse.

So how does this play to writing?

This is a mini-rant. I figure, if you want to fight with me here, go ahead . . . just play nice. I would say that the reviews for THE ROOFER were some of the best of my career. THE ROOFER, if you haven't read it, is unrelentingly dark. It has incest and murder and rape in it. And The Westies (the irish mob in Hell's Kitchen).

There are two on-line reviewers/bloggers who seem to HATE me. I mean, not just hate my books, but take it personally that I am published and they're not--AND that I write books "glorifying" the mob (ummm, did you actually READ The Roofer? Did you recall the bathtub scene? The claw hammer scene? The bloody nose in the dinner scene? The scene when Uncle Two gets his arm sliced to the bone? The glory in that is . . .???) And, in one online discussion after its release, someone suggested that my books carry a warning label. That they be censored.

Here's my belief: Censorship is wrong.

My spiritual beliefs don't love violence in lyrics and gratuitous violence in movies. I don't like politics of hate. And there's a lot of that in this country. But if you don't want to read it, see it, or hear it, turn off your TV, don't buy the book, turn off your radio.

I don't glorify the mob. I don't advocate solving your problems with a claw hammer. It's FICTION. That means we make it up. But I wrote about the world I knew. NOW I understand my friend. I may not like the world of rappers. I may not like the world of prostitution or the world of the mob or the world of racists or the world of MANY people ranting on their blogs. But I think an artist, a writer, a rapper, has the right to do their art, their rap, their book.

So . . . my peaceful rant of the day. Anyone?