Actually Africans did make "congos" which gives the drum "congo" it's name... the Congo is in Africa. And actually, PR and DR are afro-latino countries. A lot of the music, dancing, food, etc comes from a fusion of African, Spanish, and Native cultures. So Africans didn't "invent" salsa, but African dance and culture had a big influence on it. And those are facts. I'm Rican and Black (and some other stuff but that's beside th point), also I studied African Diaspora (the dispersement of African people throughout the entire world), and I took Salsa dance, & Afro-Caribbean dance. I learned that fact, that the cultures from DR & PR have a large African influence, from all of those classes I took. Latinos tend to act as though it's an insult to acknowledge that their cultures has ANYTHING to do with African anything... but it does. There is nothing to be ashamed of. We're all brothers and sisters. And all of this Blsck vs Latino stuff has to stop. We're all the same. There are Latinos darker than African Americans, so what's the beef? Plus, we are all mixed race (study your history). African Americans tend to be mixed with White from slave masters and Natives, which is why American Blacks look so different from Africans. DR & PR (& Brazil, etc) tend to be mixed with Spanish or Portugese, Native, and African. The only difference there is skin tone discrimination that happened a lot down there, which is why most of them hate Haitians. Plus there were less African slaves than in the States, especially in PR.
In this particular movie, Omari plays Rob. Rob is a young, Black, aspiring rapper from NY. His dad is an Afro-Latino man living in PR, whom he's never even seen before. His mom is Black. He gets into some trouble and someone wants him dead, so his mom decides to finally let him meet his Rican father, Roberto, and go live with him in PR for a while until the heat dies down in NY. It's not really supposed to be a Rican guy... he's supposed to be Black. I do agree that Omari isn't the right choice, seeing as some of his feature would've needed to be a little more Latino in order for it to be believable that he's mixed. When have you seen a mixed kid that looks THAT Black? Some look more Black than others, but none look THAT Black. He could've had some Latino down the line, like Grandfather or something, but that kid looks Black. They could've pressed his hair out or something... But his face is similar to Giancarlo's. So it sorta works... barely.
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