As the country confronts police brutality and mistreatment of black people in the wake of George Floyd‘s killing, ABC rebroadcast a groundbreaking 2016 episode of “Black-ish” on Tuesday that confronted those troubling issues.
“Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris Barris spoke about the timely re-airing of the episode in an Instagram post Tuesday, saying it’s “been 1,562 days since we first shared that episode with the world and it breaks my heart on so many levels that this episode feels just as timely as it did then and eerily prescient to what’s happening to black people in this country today.”
USA TODAY spoke to Barris and actor Anthony Anderson in 2016 about the decision to present the episode, which features two black parents answering their children’s questions about issues that have deep historical and cultural roots, in a comedy series.
The episode, titled “Hope,” explores how parents often struggle to talk to their kids about life’s thornier issues – in this case, a fictional news story about an unarmed black teenager selling DVDs who is tased dozens of times by a cop.
In his Instagram post Tuesday, Barris expressed gratitude to ABC for rebroadcasting the episode, along with his fervent wish: “The real hope is that it inspires to you join us in demanding liberty and justice for all – once and for all.”
