Taye Diggs has been making headlines following a statement he made on race, specifically in terms of his son's biracial identity as both black and white. As the father of a 6-year-old son with his ex-wife, singer/actress Idina Menzel, Diggs has made it a priority to instill a sense of pride in kids who feel pressured to adhere to the socially constructed notion that you can be one race or another, but never both.

In a recent interview with Sway Calloway, Diggs discussed his new children's book, Chocolate Me, and was quoted as saying,"When you call biracial kids black, you risk disrespecting that one half of who you are and that's my fear." He explains further, "I don't want my son to be in a situation where he calls himself black and everyone thinks he has a black mom and a black dad, and then they see a white mother, they wonder, 'oh, what's going on here?'"

Out of both support and disapproval, fans took to Twitter to respond.

From the empathetic to the scathing, the response to Diggs' comments run the gamut. The actor also used President Obama as an example to further illustrate his point: "As African Americans, we were so quick to say, 'Okay, he's black, he's black' and then there were the white people who were afraid to say he was biracial because who knows. Everybody refers to him as the first black President, I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying that it's interesting. It would be great if it didn't matter and that people could call him mixed. We're still choosing to make that decision, and that's when I think you get into some dangerous waters."

In the largely lighthearted conversation, Diggs also joked that his mother knew he would marry a white woman, "My mother said 'I told you!' [laughs]. She always thought - I hate this, but I'm being honest![laughs] - she said, 'I always knew you were gonna marry a white girl!'"

Unfortunately, following the interview, Diggs himself has inadvertently gotten into some "dangerous waters," which may only cause further confusion about the point he was trying to make: race has been, and continues to be, an uncomfortable and emotionally-charged subject that revolves around a conversation many people still are not ready to have. Regardless, it seems Diggs is more concerned about his son's emotional well-being than he is with the opinions of others.

Tags: Taye Diggs Sway Calloway race trending