I saw a comment on Youtube trying to claim that black people in the Roman Empire could only be slaves or gladiators, and that anyone disagreeing with them is disagreeing with facts.

Of course, the actual facts are that the Romans didn't view race the same way as we do. Skin color seems to have mattered little to them, while they may have attributed certain qualities to different groups of people there wasn't really discrimination. Anyone with a little knowledge of the Empire should know any non-citizen could gain Roman citizenship through service as an auxiliary, they never would have denied someone based on their skin color. One only needs to look at the Severan Tondo, a portrait of Emperor Septimus Severus who was born in Libya, to see skin color wasn't an issue. People need to stop projecting modern day views onto the past.

There was also another comment claiming the Roman Empire wasn't ethically diverse... Sigh, simply looking at a map of their Empire should be enough to see they ruled over many ethnicities. Italians only made up a portion of the Empire's population, they were always outnumbered by the vast number of different peoples in the Empire. The Roman Empire was FAR from homogeneous, one of it's guiding principles was that anyone could become a Roman citizen.