Regularly, people of color are overrepresented in the media as criminals and changing this narrative is exactly what WGVU Public Media Producer Mariano Avila sought to do.
“We are always labeled the Hispanic person, the Asian person, the Black person, the Biracial person, the Native person…we are a whole community. So how do you just tell your story from your perspective and include your community.”
To change the narrative, Avila developed a program called Shaping Narratives and its' a program by and for people of color and it involves a group of five who each got to develop a show about issues they are passionate about. “The Black Honest Truth” is one of them and its hosted by Christine Mwangi.
“We moved to Baltimore, Maryland from Nairobi, Kenya and we are blessed to have both family and friends to welcome to this new country and to a new way of life.” (5 seconds from "The Black Honest Truth").
In her show, Mwangi explores the lived experiences of Blackness in America as both common and different between African Americans and African immigrants and refugees.
“Come together as Black people in America to honestly have dialogue around similar subjects of lived experiences and to come to a common truth that we can both find healing and common ground in.”
And that’s just one of these programs, the rest range in topics from communities of color and their relationship with the environment to the ways geopolitical events have made it possible for us to taste food from around the world. The pilot programs will air the on Tuesdays in January and the first Tuesday in February at 6pm on WGVU Public Media.
Michelle Jokisch Polo, WGVU News.
