After two seasons on the air, “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris is constantly having to answer questions about diversity.
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Tracee Ellis Ross, left, and Anthony Anderson participate in the “Black-ish'” panel during the Disney/ABC Television Critics Association summer press tour on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2016, in Beverly Hills, Calif.
“I will be so happy when “diversity” isn’t a word”, Barris said.
“We’re so divisive as a community and we always have to box everything in, and I kind of feel like, isn’t it just a good family show? It’s ridiculous … It doesn’t matter who’s watching our show”.
“Those questions continue the conversation in a direction that does not help the conversation”.
“It’s clouding the conversation”, he said. “The fact is that they’re watching it”.
Everything was going nicely – or blandly – when out of the dark, emerged this question: “Now that it’s all settled and the show’s a success, you must have some statistics or information about how much of the audience is black and how much is white, and I was wondering if you could share that and maybe share how that information shapes your sensibilities about how you write”.
“We live in a world where everyone wants to think they’re right all the time, and we’re asking people to instead listen to what others have to say and try to live a life of happiness”. I’m not trying to attack you. When asked a question that was aimed at understanding the show’s audience, and whether or not it was primarily African-American viewers, Barris responded by calling the question out.
An emotional Barris also emphasized that the show – which recently nabbed three Emmy nominations (one each for Anderson and Ellis and then one for the series itself) – doesn’t just focus on issues about race. But don’t you see yourself in it? She said that could best be accomplished by adding more people of color to the shows’ initial contestant pools, which yield the runner-up who tends to become the next cycle’s starring bachelor or bachelorette. And I feel like every question at every panel … We get to start a conversation, and I get to see my own family reflected and laugh about it. (Marcus Scribner) and kids Jack (Miles Brown) and Diane (Marsai Martin.) Rainbow is having a baby, and we’ll see her brother Johan, played by Hamilton’s Daveed Diggs, who originated the Tony-winning dual roles of Marquis de LaFayette and Thomas Jefferson in the Broadway phenomenon.
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Barris said the show is more than just that.
