Growing up, Shane never gave much thought to skin color. His father and mother had a variety of friends, and ethnicity never entered into it. He lived on a block in Monticello with friends and neighbors of every stripe—African American like himself, Latino, white. Likewise, in the schools he attended, Cooke Elementary and Monticello High School. In the classroom, “just being together,” at parties, in the cafeteria and on athletic teams, diversity was the norm.

A few years later, he was in for a shock. As a teen, he had gone to Evergreen Housing Projects in Monticello for a basketball game and all the spectators were Afro-American. He had never seen so many faces of one color, at one time, in one place. Only the athletes were a mixed group. This was an eye-opener.

Now 26, his character shaped by early experiences at home and with peers, Shane strives to create harmony in a society that is often racially divisive. Shane personifies the musical adage expressed in the Broadway show, “South Pacific”: “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear… of people whose skin is a different shade…” He was taught to love and accept, his statements resonating with the hope of Martin Luther King that one day people will be judged by the “content of their character, and not the color of their skin.”

He said, “When you look at a person’s color, you are looking at it from the wrong angle. You need to look at it from the inside out.

“When you operate from the heart, everyone is the same; you operate from love. The brain can have negative thoughts, prejudices. Our brains make us different. It’s what’s in your own heart that makes you count. No matter what anybody does to you, you can’t let them, or the past, or evil people change what’s in your heart, no matter how they treat you.

“The good people are more powerful than the bad, even if outnumbered, because love is stronger than hate. A lot of news you get from social media, TV, newspapers, is full of anger and violence. But, now is the time to flip it, to show the other side of reality.”

This is Shane’s message, and his mission is to spread it as a rap performer. The seeds of his career as a rapper were sown early on, when he was seven and started writing poetry. By age 12, he set the words to a beat. A few years later, while attending SUNY Sullivan, he met rappers from Harlem and the Bronx. They excited his imagination and inspired him.

But while their words spoke of getting high on drugs, his spoke of “getting high on life.” He relates that as he matured, his “horizons expanded.” He “had seen plenty of bad things, and wanted to approach it differently.” He wanted something “more soothing” than most rap, something that would heal:

“Early in the sun rise shine like gold recharging life

seem like when your positive the matrix ain’t a need in

life past time was cloudy now Im on a clearer route

flipping on that good energy change the way

I steer in life blinker flashing to the right

Nubian not African…”

Rapping these words, his luminous, dark eyes and sculpted features rivet the attention with their Nubian beauty. His lithe, tall frame moves with the swift precision of an athlete and the grace of a dancer.

And, recently, he has been on stage in Atlanta, Baltimore, South Carolina and Kutsher’s, and on April 23, in Secaucus, NJ. His recording label is Starlite Entertainment.

Making a go of it in the arts can be tough. But his family life, in which both parents worked hard to support their four children, with strict discipline and a no-nonsense attitude toward meeting responsibilities, has given Shane a firm anchor.

Shane not only raps his principles of healing and helping, he lives them each day: a few years back, he had just seated himself on a subway train in the Bronx when he noticed that the woman sitting opposite had bare feet, no shoes, no socks. He looked around and saw that none of his fellow passengers had taken notice. He contemplated saying something, but knew they would shrug her off with something like, “She probably sold her shoes to buy drugs.” So without uttering a word, he removed his own shoes and gave them to her, as he departed the train. Leaving the subway station, he walked shoeless into the chilly autumn night to get his car.