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I set out to tell my story, which is based on my family. Dr. Cosby told his story in 'The Cosby Show.' The comparisons stop there in terms of my creation of the show. We just both happen to have black fathers at the center of it.
Kenya Barris -
'Black-ish' is a show that has spoken to all different types of people and brought them closer as a community, and I'm so proud of the series.
Kenya Barris
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For me, one of the big things I really worried about a lot was nuclear war growing up.
Kenya Barris -
I will be so happy when 'diversity' is not a word.
Kenya Barris -
I'm doing another pilot about a black Democratic pundit who's married to a white Republican pundit. And the purpose of me wanting to do that show - and ABC sort of supported me in the way they did - is because I feel like, you know, the political system is like an old married couple.
Kenya Barris -
And I feel like, as a black man within black culture, I know very well firsthand - as do my parents and my grandparents and great-grandparents - we're used to things not going our way.
Kenya Barris -
We should be aware and constantly having conversations about the world because that's how you change it from the bigger standpoint rather than acutely trying to change things.
Kenya Barris -
There has never been a prosecuted case of slavery. There's no criminality to it. So, it was just like, 'It's over,' and thus, because it was over, and it was never considered 'wrong' in the prosecutable, criminal sense of the word, the country doesn't take it as wrong.
Kenya Barris
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After the first couple of years of on 'Black-ish,' my wife and I actually broke up. We got back together, and it was this really, really difficult time for me.
Kenya Barris -
Laurence Fishburne - he's a great actor, but he dances and sings, too? He can just do everything.
Kenya Barris -
The small moments I've had to talk with President Obama, I've told him, 'I get it.' His presidency was in some ways almost overshadowed by the fact that he was the first black president.
Kenya Barris -
I tried to do Kwanzaa with my family and was like, 'This sucks. What am I doing this for?' For me, I felt like I was doing it because I was trying to live up to someone else's idea of what 'black' was.
Kenya Barris -
I know a lot for me, personally, the best moments have come from watching my kids have an experience I never thought about as a kid but then remembered as a parent.
Kenya Barris -
I hear a creak in my house, and I'm calling the police immediately, but at the same time, I do know that when I call them, I'm going to make sure to say, 'I'm a black guy, and this is my house.'
Kenya Barris
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What I did not want to be was a fad, because fads die. I had one of the George Michael Wham! neon-colored sweatshirts, and I thought it would never go out of style. Fads die.
Kenya Barris -
I've found that the more honest and true you are and can talk about a character and people's experiences, it's less ostracizing. It actually has the opposite effect than one would think. It makes the characters and the story more inclusive.
Kenya Barris -
I still believe a little bit that changing gender roles have hurt relationships.
Kenya Barris -
For me, it was important to keep my name in 'mainstream Hollywood.'
Kenya Barris -
As a creative, you have to be your truest form. You can't worry about fitting into whatever boxes people want to put you in.
Kenya Barris -
We're supposed to be becoming more evolved as a society, and we're actually becoming less evolved.
Kenya Barris
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As much as we want to say racism is dead, it's still rearing its ugly head constantly.
Kenya Barris -
I really want to do what 'Veep' did. 'Veep,' in a very comical way, gave us a look inside the political machine, but I want to do it for the average American family.
Kenya Barris -
To me, the Peabody was as big if not bigger than any award, but I do understand an Emmy Award-winning show has a different buzz when it comes to start talking about renewals and things like that. There's a professional something to it that matters.
Kenya Barris -
Actors are magical people. They can take words you wrote and say them in a way that, although you thought the line was good when you wrote it, it's fantastic when it comes out of their mouth.
Kenya Barris