Anthony Anderson petitioning for POTUS to guest star on ‘Black-ish’

And like most parents, enjoys talking about his children. This is all very important – their home state of California is in a drought, after all!

His dad, Dre, who has to confess that he had encouraged a vehicle sing-along to West’s song with Jack, word included, offers a knee-jerk defense.

Finding out that his son might be expelled in accordance with his school’s zero tolerance policy on hate speech, even though his son is black, sends Dre into a fit. Episodes like this allow for differing viewpoints to be addressed, like between Dre and Pops (Laurence Fishburne), Pops and Ruby (Jenifer Lewis), and Dre and his co-workers, yet this is done so without being too controversial or too divisive. The episode ends with Dre putting Jack to bed.

Also convenient is how Dre only lists the white people who have “benefitted” from use of the n-word.

Mm-hmm. Not if you can’t say [bleep] It’s not. “But every now and then, it rears its head up to them”. “Although I would never say never, I would add it’s highly unlikely”. Even Dre’s mom manages to escape from wherever the family keeps her to declare her view, which lines up with her husband’s: “It’s only a judgment said with disdainful indictment”.

“The first thing out of their mouths was, ‘We love Black-ish,'” he said. “Colored”, says Mr. Spencer.

He carefully weighed using the word itself on the air. What can’t people call you?

1) African Americans. Among the cant’s: Police Officers. Rainbow’s philosophy is that the word is hateful and shouldn’t be said by anyone. That was the biggest thing-not to have a barrier to the comedic entry point. “Matter of fact, the whole Terror Squad can say it”. Nor should that be this show’s aim; this is a conversation that isn’t going anywhere and it certainly won’t be resolved by a half-hour sitcom.

So much to learn!

Did you choose Jack to be the instigator on goal because he’s so damn cute? Regardless of their positions, Dre and Bow can agree on getting Jack, now facing expulsion, back into school.

Dre thinks he’s got his case in the bag when he sees Jack’s principal is Black. “It’s not like they mean anything by it”, she tells him.

While being interviewed at the Emmy Awards, Anderson mentioned that he had talked to the President and First Lady about possibly guest starring on Black-ish. The debate Dre finds himself in with his parents, colleagues, and school board members is really a gateway to a much larger observation about society, and how hard it can be to find simple truth when hundreds of years of ugly history and complicated non-written rules cloud an issue. I used to look at Friends and Seinfeld and wonder, ‘What part of New York is that? It becomes a debate over who is allowed to use the n-word and whether “the last person that should be held accountable for it is an eight-year-old boy who doesn’t have an ounce of hate in his heart”. He bursts into the school board meeting to challenge the decision. As a writer, I’m all for the integrity of the artist, but do we have a certain responsibility, and where does that land, and is there a responsibility for the listener? “Dammit, it’s his birthright”.

But he is aware that the word carries an explosive negative power and that African-Americans have varying opinions about it: “Black people have a schizophrenic and complicated relationship with that word”, Barris says.

Bow: Nope! Not going to be the only black family in the neighborhood with a brown lawn. Maybe re-holster our firearms, Charles. Charles. You only wrote that check so you can say Negro.

Bow: Oh, well … just the foreward. And for me, that was something I wanted to do.

Dre: It was arguably Denzel’s best work!

“I don’t have all the answers”, she said.

There’s just one minor problem. “But we also want to start a conversation”. Charlie, who’s become a great tertiary character, responds, “Wowwww. You go to set to have fun”.

Josh: This feels like a awful system.

I don’t know about that, but I know the rules are clear.