Chris Cole uses radio shows and podcasts to raise awareness about the most pressing social issues. Through his stories and interviews, he seeks to amplify new voices and perspectives in our national reckoning with racism.
When Chris joined the LearnServe Fellows program in 2016, he knew that he wanted to fight racial discrimination through education. He and Co-Founder Desmond Dinkins first worked to bring African American history into the required curriculum for schools across the Washington, DC area.
Then in 2017, Jordan Peele wrote and directed Get Out. Chris went to see the movie, and he loved it. He saw Jordan Peele shine a light on racism, and he saw the powerful effect Get Out had on conversations with his friends. He noticed that a movie could reach people on a deep level, and make them question the status quo. He started to focus on sharing the experiences of Black Americans through media.
Check out this clip from 2018, where Chris shares the story of his LearnServe social venture with our Development Manager and alumna Emma Strother.
Over three years, Chris refined his venture in the LearnServe Fellows and Incubator programs, broadened his global perspective on race and social change through two LearnServe Abroad trips to Zambia, and volunteered as an alumni mentor to his peers. We recently caught up with Chris to learn more about how this experience has impacted his social change work over time, and where he plans to take media coverage next.
What would you like to share with the LearnServe community about your work in media?
I started working with the WHIP Radio news department in my Sophomore year at Temple. I started off doing news updates, but then I graduated onto live shows. Last year, I hosted three, which was really fun. We had a show that was called The Hoot, which was basically just a little play on words cause we’re Owls. It had to do with Temple University news. And then we had The District, which was Philadelphia area news, and my favorite, Rational Radio, which was national news with a global aspect to it as well.
I was able to have guest shows on the radio, like we had one of my Africology professors make an appearance, and we talked about different things that were going on on campus and in the world. I’ve also been able to mold my LearnServe venture to the media work I’ve been doing in college.
What did you talk about with your professor?
Professor Aaron Smith came on the show, and we talked about a number of things. We talked about the election, and that was really cool, just to have a different perspective regarding what the election meant for Black students and in terms of combatting racism.
We also talked about Temple, and how around that time there was a mural here on campus that got defaced. It had a racial slur written on it. The Cecil B. Moore mural, he was a prominent Civil Rights figure here in Philadelphia. So we talked about what that meant, and the greater meaning of the image.
Temple University has had a lot of racial issues since I’ve been here. I remember my Freshman year there was a whole incident where these people had plastered the n word and other slurs on posters up around campus that had to deal with Bernie Sanders’ race in the 2016 election.
We talked about the importance of learning African American history. As much as I like to speak about it, it’s important that my audience hear from professors too. Temple University has a great school for Africology, which is one of the main reasons why I came here.
You mentioned that some of your work in radio was building on your LearnServe venture. Can you tell us a bit about that venture?
Originally in LearnServe I was working on the African American Abstract, which had to deal with getting African American history into high schools and on the high school curriculum as a required course. Then it turned into the BlackED Perspective because I was interested in media, and I wanted to focus more on how the media can raise awareness of racial issues.
Now in college my major is Media Studies and Production, and I’m on the Entrepreneurship Track. So I’m trying to create my own media business. And I’ve been keeping the same framework of the BlackED Perspective in terms of my target audience, and in terms of the things that I want to be doing with my platform, such as producing youth and children’s media.
My venture and my classes also just better help me understand the story that I want to tell. My classes in media have helped me understand how I want to enter the business, and my classes in Africology have really helped me in terms of how I want to shape the content of my business.
What topics are you most passionate about covering right now?
I think that the time we’re living in right now would be very interesting to document in movies. You know, if you think about some of the greatest directors like Scorsese, they have a tone in their movies, and you’re placed in a specific time and a specific culture. Like how a lot of Scorsese movies are older, gangster-type films.
I think the time we’re living through right now would be very interesting to show in movies because it seems like a lot of people are stuck in an old way of life, but some others are pushing for change. And there’s a clash between people right now. I notice between Black people in America there’s a lot of back and forth in terms of what is the best way for change.
What perspectives have you seen?
It sounds like it’s a lot of miscommunication between people. A lot of people are caught off-guard with change. You know, change means that you have to grow, and some people don’t like growth. I think that a lot of people mistake things that are going on right now as a fault in the system, and they don’t necessarily realize that it’s a system working how it was intended to.
In terms of policing, and in terms of mass incarceration, while voting is an essential part of changing how laws are made and enforced, there definitely needs to be more work within communities.
A lot of times I have conversations with people about the defund the police movement, and how it doesn’t necessarily mean police are non-existent in the future. It just means we should reimagine how these roles look like in communities. A lot of times police are reactive and not proactive to resolving a situation or solving a crime. And if we reallocated some of these funds that a lot of police departments use to militarize, you know it could be going into drug treatment, educational resources, healthcare resources, so on and so forth.
What are your thoughts on the role of art in giving voice to current events?
That’s a great question. I will tell you that my answer has a couple layers. I do think that there is a huge responsibility for artists. But I would say that about everyone. In terms of what LearnServe has instilled in me, I believe we all have a voice and we should be using that voice. I think that’s really important.
In the same vein, if that responsibility falls on everyone, sometimes artists can be allowed to just be themselves. Especially with Black artists, there’s a lot of societal pressure to talk about racism. It’s good to talk about racism, but there’s a lot of artists who may not have necessarily done that much research, so they just know their personal experience. I never want to take away from what anyone’s experienced, but it’s important to have both your own experience and education on racism.
Me personally, I could only have seen one side of the elephant and have a skewed perception of what elephants look like. But if I really took the time to learn all sides of the elephant I can begin to understand better, not only what it looks like, but also what it does in it’s environment. I see a lot of artists have their takes, and sometimes it’s a long-lasting thing, and sometimes it’s just for the trend of the moment. Sometimes artists feel they have to say something, even if it’s not as constructive as it could be.
There’s all this pressure, like you can’t just have a story about a Black boy living his life. But some of that’s changing now. I’ll give you an example. Have you ever seen Moonlight? That movie definitely wasn’t just about his Blackness or really even about his sexuality, it was more of like a coming of age story. And his identities played into the story because they were a part of his life, but the movie wasn’t about that.
Do you have any advice for young people trying to make a difference right now?
Don’t give up on what you’re talking about. It’s important. We always have friends or folks that we’re around that don’t like talking about anything constructive. So if you find yourself as the only person who wants to have a constructive conversation, and people want to shut you down, don’t take that personally. Don’t feel like you have to quiet yourself to please them.
A lot of people that I’ve met don’t want to deal with the harsh reality of things. They just kind of want to mosey on. But LearnServe folks, a lot of times we like to push the envelope towards change. So I would say to embrace that leadership. It is hard sometimes.
I’ve had conversations with my brother, he’s doesn’t necessarily like talking about racial issues like I do, but he’ll mention it to me sometimes. He’ll be like why do you feel like you’ve got to tell people, and I’ll be like well, because I don’t know if anyone else is telling them. If I’m passionate about something, my friends inevitably will hear about it. I can’t mute myself. If you bring up the issue to me, I’ll give you my unfiltered opinion.
And the second thing I would say is just try to incorporate your passion into everything that you do. I feel like college has really let me work more from my passion. I’ve been more interested in my classes because I’m trying to apply them to my passion. It feels like I’m doubly investing in myself. I’m learning, and I’m also growing my venture.
Are there any movies or shows you’ve watched recently that you would encourage other folks to check out?
I would say Watchmen on HBO is definitely one of my favorite shows. It just recently came out. And it starts off with the Tulsa Massacre, and I thought that was really really well done, in terms of how they incorporated that event into the story. And a lot of people didn’t know about the Tulsa Massacre until Watchmen, which I thought was really interesting.
I’m a really big Jordan Peele fan, so I like Us and Get Out.
Ava DuVernay of course with When They See Us and 13th.
Lovecraft Country is another really interesting show that just came out. I can’t give too much of an opinion because the first season is not done yet, but I will say that so far I really like it. They tackle racism, and what it means to grow up in a colonized society. And it’s set in the 1960s in the US.
Atlanta and Insecure also two really good shows that I would recommend. Insecure especially is hilarious.
As you think about the year coming up, what are some of your goals?
I’ve been trying to get a podcast that is related to the BlackED Perspective started for a few months now. And of course Covid put a big dent into that. I was just about the get it launched and then we switched to online learning. It messed a bunch of people’s schedules up, and we didn’t really have access to the studio on campus anymore. But I do plan to get that going this year, and I already have ideas on what we’re going to talk about.
Can you give us a sneak preview?
For the first episode I want to talk about Frantz Fanon. He’s an author and a cultural theorist. He wrote many different books, but I want to talk about Black Skin White Mask. Because in it he talks about a lot of the issues that we see today. And he wrote this book I believe in 1952. So I want to just kind of go over how he thinks about race and racial issues. This video I’ll send you talks about Fanon’s ideas in Black Skin White Mask.
Have you heard of the premise of code switching, like in the movie Sorry to Bother You? Fanon talks about what that “white mask” means. He was from Martinique, a French colony, and he talked about the pressures to learn perfect French as opposed to Creole. He also talked about religion, and about being Black in religious spaces. Basically where he was growing up in order to be successful you had to assimilate to what the Western standard of “normal” was, and that was whiteness. He had to be the best Black/white person he could be in order to succeed, which is something we still see today.
It’s interesting in college because everyone’s trying to figure out who they are. And it just helps you understand the things you used to hear all the time. Like people would say to me, “oh you talk white,” stuff like that. And what does that really mean? Fanon addresses those underlying issues.
How can people check out your radio shows and subscribe to your podcast?
You can follow my Soundcloud page, where I’ll be linking information about my podcast and YouTube channel. I’ll also be on Rational Radio this year, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, at 4:00 pm eastern.