This week on Color Commentary, Dr. Charles Cole is joined by digital storyteller and journalist Torraine Walker to break down the viral beef between The Joe Budden Podcast and The Native Land Pod—and what it really says about class, authenticity, and Black discourse. From the performance of intellectualism to the question of what credentials actually mean, Dr. Cole and Torraine keep it real about being stuck between worlds and why Joe's platform resonates with millions while others just perform.

Torraine Walker is a digital storyteller, journalist, and brand strategist specializing in authentic messaging and content creation. His work has appeared in Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, Splinter News, and more. He's partnered with organizations like Community Movement Builders and Energy Convertors to help find and amplify authentic voices in Black media. Learn more at torrainewalker.com.

We'd love to hear from you! Email Charles at colorcommentarypod@gmail.com

A decade of the same results means the education system is functioning exactly as designed. The only way to end the proficiency illusion is to build an Agency Movement—one student, one family, one classroom at a time.

We'd love to hear from you! Email Charles at colorcommentarypod@gmail.com

After the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein wrote a piece that many saw as too sympathetic to Kirk's legacy. Ta-Nehisi Coates responded with a piece in Vanity Fair criticizing Klein's take, comparing it to the whitewashing of the Confederate cause after the Civil War. Let's talk about it.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein Hash Out Their Charlie Kirk Disagreement (The Ezra Klein Show, 9/28/25)
• Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way by Ezra Klein (NYT, 9/11/25)
• Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Vanity Fair, 9/16/25)

We’d love to hear from you! Email Charles at colorcommentarypod@gmail.com

We love celebrating Black excellence. And we should. The first Black CEO, the only Black partner, historic appointments - these matter. These are victories.

But somewhere along the way, something shifted. Black excellence stopped being about actual excellence and started being about performing a version of Blackness that makes the ruling class comfortable.

There's a version of Black excellence that's become popular in corporate America, in academia, in predominantly white institutions. And it's not real excellence. It's performance.

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Young Thug just walked out of jail after 2½ years. His plea deal ends Georgia's longest criminal trial in history. But the real question isn't about his freedom - it's about the culture that put him there in the first place, and why it's time for Black communities to have an honest conversation about moving beyond street codes that are destroying us from the inside.

We’d love to hear from you! Email Charles at colorcommentarypod@gmail.com

This week on Color Commentary, Charles asks - what do Chance the Rapper's comeback album, a failed shipping company from 1919, and the heated debates tearing apart Black America today all have in common?

By the end of this episode, you'll understand how they're all connected to the same fundamental question: What does it mean to have real power as a Black person in this world?

We’d love to hear from you! Email Charles at colorcommentarypod@gmail.com

This week on Color Commentary, Charles and producer Tommy were recording an episode when we learned that Charlie Kirk had been killed. This episode is an iimpromptu recording of their conversation on the matter.

Email Charles at colorcommentarypod@gmail.com

This week on Color Commentary, Charles discussed what happens when a brand that built its name on reclaiming Black history suddenly finds its own story being rewritten in court.

• Under Receivership, Uncle Nearest Is At Risk (Forbes, 8/27/25)

We’d love to hear from you! Email Charles at colorcommentarypod@gmail.com