An award-winning poet, actor and writer told AACC students Tuesday to think twice about labeling and identifying someone by race, gender, disorders or diseases.

Carlos Andres Gomez, who calls himself a “spoken word artist,” performed multiple slam poems—intensely emotional poetry recitals—dealing with controversial topics like how some people judge identity and label each other, and how others do not allow equality for same-sex marriage and minority groups.

Gomez told the student audience members such attitudes cause harm.

“Everyone could relate to what he was talking about,” Martine Parode, an AACC psychology major, said. “It was eye opening, and it made me feel more connected to people in the audience.”

Gomez, a Hispanic-American, said he supports equal rights for same sex-marriage and minorities.

“It was inspirational,” Becca Cohn, a business administration major, said. “At some points it made me tear up.”

Gomez explained the issues he raises go anywhere from personal to political. Gomez said he hopes to make students think in complicated ways about the world.

“Through challenging people, making them laugh and making them feel deeply,” Gomez said about teaching students, “I can make them take the world in a more humanistic way.”

Gomez speaks and performs poems all over the world, and he writes books, plays and memoirs. He also acted in the movie “Inside Man,” starring Denzel Washington and directed by Spike Lee.

Gomez recently published a book, “Man Up,” which helps readers authenticate their “self,” and allows men to explore what it really means to be a man in this modernistic world.

Gomez, 34, lives in Queens, New York, with his wife and 14-month-old daughter..