This week, we're talking about proxy wars. And I don't mean the kind where countries fight each other through intermediaries — though we'll get to that. I'm talking about how almost every cultural fight you're seeing right now is a proxy war for something deeper. Something people can't or won't say out loud.

Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show? That's not really about the performance. J. Cole's new album? That's not really about the music. These are battlefields for fights about identity, power, and who belongs in America.

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Today, we're talking about something that doesn't get enough attention: the high price of poverty. How it costs more to be poor in America. How the system doesn't just ignore poverty—it profits from it.

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

And check out our merch here!

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

Today we're talking about something that will reshape Black futures for the next generation—new federal student loan rules that just cleared a major hurdle at the U.S. Department of Education.

We’d love to hear from you! 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

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

Today we're talking about something that's been bothering me for a while: these so-called "culture" pages on social media. You know the ones—millions of followers, claiming they're amplifying Black voices, but really just posting our worst moments on repeat and making money off it.

Joining me today is Chris Stewart—Citizen Stewart. He runs Brightbeam, he's co-creator of 8 Black Hands with me, and he's spent years fighting for educational justice. He knows firsthand how these narratives shape what people expect from our kids.

Thank you for listening to Color Commentary. We'd love to hear from you, so drop us an email at colorcommentarypod@gmail.com.