Saturday, February 27, 2016

How ‘Blackish’ tackled police brutality while staying true to its roots

“I have never been as afraid about an episode of television that I’ve written in my life,” “Blackish” creator Kenya Barris said in a phone interview ahead of Wednesday’s episode, which deals with police brutality.
The episode, titled “Hope,” finds the Johnson family watching news coverage of a case involving an African American teenager. They grapple with how to talk to the family’s youngest members — twins Jack and Diane — about the community reaction to the case and others like it.
Barris said that while he believes police brutality is an important issue, the crux of the episode is the challenge of talking to young children about difficult topics to which they’re constantly exposed. 
This episode was a step in the right direction, and it was a positive move.  Instead of dancing around the issue like most TV shows do, this show presented the issue of police brutality as the main focus of the episode. Because our media is mainly controlled by white corporations issues like these are never brought up. But ABC is changing this by promoting important topics in their shows. This could help other companies realize they need to do this as well to change the way the public views certain issues and give light to ones they don't address.

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