Race and Racism and Why Labels are No Good

RR Black and Latino

Give an Opinion

There is a lot of focus on racial identity in “Black and Latino” by Roberto Santiago. He looks black but he has a Latino name and speaks Spanish. Racially, he is a mixture of different ethnicities, so it is not strange to him to be both black and Latino and it is odd that people want to box others into such a silly category as being one thing or another, as being predominantly this or that, or as being something based on skin color, as though that was all one needed to know to gauge a person, label a person, and be done with that person. There is such a hyper-focus on race in modern society that the West now seems more obsessed with race than the Nazis. What is this all about? Why is it this way? The author of the article is also perplexed by this situation and wants to explain how he is both black and Latino so that people can stop trying to peg him or box him in with their superficial constructs. “I am both and always have been,” he says trying to make his point loud and clear.

My opinion on this is that race is way over-emphasized. Everyone is a mixture of different ethnic and racial influences—I don’t care where you come from or what color you skin is. We are all a product of a product of a product of a product of people who got together from different places and races and brought new beings into the world. Why should this be a problem for anybody?

It is unfortunate that people spend all their time talking about race because it really does remind me of the Nazis, who did the same thing. Sooner or later all this hyper-focus on race is going to lead to some big problems as people get upset and riled up about the most superficial things—like what’s my label, or how should we categorize that person—it’s all so arbitrary and misguided. People are people, and that gets forgotten in the race question: people don’t want to see others as human beings, they only want to see them as something to be labeled and put on a shelf—or in a concentration camp, sooner or later.