ABC’s ‘black-ish’ tackles the ‘N-word’; felt, not heard

In this image released by ABC, Anthony Anderson, left, and Miles Brown appear in a scene from the family comedy "Black-ish." On the episode titled, "The Word," airing Wednesday, Sept. 23, Jack, portrayed by Brown, performs a song at a school talent show with a controversial lyric that leads to his possible expulsion from school. (Kelsey McNeal/ABC via AP) In this image released by ABC, Anthony Anderson, left, and Miles Brown appear in a scene from the family comedy "Black-ish." On the episode titled, "The Word," airing Wednesday, Sept. 23, Jack, portrayed by Brown, performs a song at a school talent show with a controversial lyric that leads to his possible expulsion from school. (Kelsey McNeal/ABC via AP)

By Associated Press September 22, 2015 4 min read

LOS ANGELES (AP) – When “black-ish” creator Kenya Barris confiscated his daughter’s phone for a teenage misstep, he was taken aback by one message string he read.

“‘Hold on, why is this kid saying the N-word?'” Barris recalled asking his 16-year-old. “And she said, ‘All my friends say it.'”

Barris realized that it’s “become for them this word that has no history, no understanding, nothing but that rap has made it a cool rhyming word, or something to add punctuation to a sentence. It’s lost all meaning.”

That epiphany lead to the second-season opener of ABC’s “black-ish,” airing 9:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday, which puts the word in the context of both the multigenerational Johnson family and, more broadly, within black history.

The episode’s approach is candid and direct, as is the series’ trademark, but avoids trading in shock value. The N-word is used perhaps a dozen times by different characters but is always bleeped out.