*The issue of police brutality will be addressed this month on an episode of “Black-ish.”
The Feb. 24 episode, titled “Hope,” will focus on a fictional incident of police brutality that Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross) and Andre “Dre” Johnson (Anthony Anderson) discuss with the entire family, reports Variety.
Each family member has a different reaction to the news report. Bow wants to shield the kids, especially the younger ones, from life’s harsher realities as long as she can, while Andre feels that the earlier they know, the better.
Dre’s view is co-signed by his parents Pops (Laurence Fishburne) and Ruby (Jenifer Lewis), but the conversations are wide-ranging and impassioned on all sides.
“Unfortunately the things that we are dealing with in this episode are not new, especially to the black and brown community. It’s something that’s been going on for quite some time,” Anderson told Variety.
Creator and executive producer Kenya Barris said this episode was inspired by his real life attempts to talk to his kids about various headline-making incidents of police brutality.
“We’re not ‘Law & Order’ — we’re not trying to rip things from the headlines,” Barris said. Bow and Dre talking to their kids about what they see on the news “is what this family would naturally be going through.”
“What we’re really taking on is the notion of, how do you talk to your kids about what they’re seeing?’” Barris added. His own kids “were seeing people in the streets mad. And they were like, ‘What’s going on? Why are these people so angry?’ It was this big division at my house, because I had my feelings that I wanted to spout out. But my wife had her feelings and the biggest thing is, how do you talk about your frustrations and your angers, but at the same time not take away your kids’ hope and ability to still want to grow and thrive within a world that they have to live in?”
“I commend Kenya for writing this episode and giving a voice to this problem and to bring some attention to it, outside the attention that it’s getting in the media and social media,” Anderson said.
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