When you're in the middle of it, when you're a kid growing up, you don't think, 'This is my first heartbreak.' You just think, 'My heart is broken.' But then as a parent, you look back, and you see your child go through his or her first heartbreak, and you're realizing, 'Oh my God, this is her first heartbreak.'
— Kenya Barris
I'm a huge fan of writing for people rather than writing and then trying to wedge people in. I'd love to know who the people are before I can write for them. For me, it's a much more organic way to create characters.
I'm not for having to support everything that's black, because I definitely don't. But I do feel like it is imperative for us to see that we are not a monolithic people.
I wanted to do a show about a family that is absolutely black. Because as Du Bois has shown, we do have to live a double consciousness every day in the world. We have to walk our path and walk the mainstream path, and there's never really been a show that's talked about what that's like.
I still believe a little bit that changing gender roles have hurt relationships.
No civil rights movement has gotten anywhere without the help of white liberals.
Sometimes you realize that life isn't defined by the good times.
My kids are nothing like I remember black kids being when I was a kid.
My mom went through civil rights; my dad went through civil rights. My name was Kenya because they wanted to give me an African name.
You can have good times with anyone, but it's really different and much more interesting when you look at how you get through the bad times with someone.
'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.
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.
I have a 'hope for the best, expect the worst' mentality.
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.
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.
Honestly, I regret not having spanked my kids.
The acknowledgement and celebration of Juneteenth as an American and possibly international holiday is something that I would put in the life goals column for me.
When you reach a level of status - and making it to college is an accomplishment in itself - you are trying to define who you are.
My father lost a lung in a chemical accident at General Motors, and after a while, he got a settlement that sort of changed all of our lives and moved us from, what we say, 'ashy to classy' in some aspects.
Black, white, rich, poor - we galvanize through the hard times. We really see it happen in relationships. In the best and worst of those moments, you come together, and you look for your tribe.
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.
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.
For me, Shonda Rhimes is an amazing person that I look up to. She empowered a lot of her writers to go on and do other things while, at the same time, she made sure she kept her stamp on those things and grew her business.
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.
My kids did not know that Obama was the first black president. I felt like I needed to tell them because I felt like, 'How could you not know that?' But for the ones who didn't know, he was basically the only president they knew.
At my core, I'm shy.
The thing that I get so often with network comedies - and, I think, some of the most brilliant people in the world do them - but it's easy to hide behind a joke. I kind of feel like when you have to face things, and you don't have humor, it becomes very vulnerable; it exposes your deepest and darkest fears in some aspects.
I want to make sure I don't leave any money for my kids, so I'm going to spend it all on clothes.
I am what I am as a writer because of Norman Lear and Spike Lee. Norman Lear in particular.
When you walk past a painting in a museum, if it doesn't make you feel something, then it's probably a failure.
Writers' rooms are terrifying. You take someone whose never done this before, and this is their life's dream that is about to happen or not about to happen - that is an amazing amount of pressure to have.
