September 30, 2015

“Black-ish” Took On the N-Word in Its Season Premiere. Next Up: Gun Control.


Since his latest show, Black-ish, debuted last year, showrunner Kenya Barris hasn’t been afraid of sparking debate.  

His weekly portrait of the Johnsons, a well-off black family in Los Angeles, already has taken on issues like the Republican Party’s relationship with African Americans and homophobia in the black community. And in a memorable season premiere last Wednesday, the Johnsons embraced the intergenerational debate over the N-word.

This week, the show will face another contentious issue: gun control. In an interview with BuzzFeed on Tuesday, Barris gave a preview of what will happen: When a neighborhood break-in occurs, Dre (Anthony Anderson) contemplates buying a gun, with wife Bow (Tracee Ellis Ross) arguing against it. (Nearly half of people who own a gun say they do so for protection.)

Barris said the idea behind the episode originated in the writers’ room, when the creator told his team that he was trying to buy a gun, shocking his colleagues. As he told BuzzFeed: 

They were blown away…[I was like,] This isn’t crazy. I’m not buying a gun to kill someone. But it split the room down the middle. For me, that’s always a good sign that there’s a story in there.

The notions and ideology of gun ownership has a lot socio-economic and cultural reasons behind it. We’re not a political group. And we don’t want to…start taking real hard stands on things that people have the right to have different opinions on. We want to have the filter of the family reflect different opinions and do it in a fun and funny way. That’s what we try to do with each episode.

You can catch the episode, “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Guns,” tonight at 9:30 p.m. EDT/PDT on ABC. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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