In December 2014, “black-ish” creator Kenya Barris was watching TV news coverage of activists protesting a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict a white New York police officer in the death of Eric Garner, when one of Mr. Barris’s five children, 6-year-old Beau, turned to him and asked, “Why are these people so mad?”

“I wanted to die,” Mr. Barris said. “But my wife and I had a conversation and realized it wasn’t necessarily fair for me to skew his experience with mine. But at the same time, I knew I had to talk to him about my experiences in a way that gave him some perspective, some kind of fuel to arm himself in life.”

That conversation led to “Hope,” Wednesday’s installment of ABC’s second-year sitcom, in which family man Dre (Anthony Anderson), his wife (Tracee Ellis Ross), his parents (Laurence Fishburne and Jenifer Lewis), and his four children spend nearly the entire episode in their living room debating a fictional case of police brutality near their Los Angeles home. Mr. Barris spoke about the episode as well as his feelings on FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” and the disappearing legacy of “The Cosby Show.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q. What were you trying to achieve with this episode?

A. Police brutality is the issue we chose to talk about, but the bigger issue for me is talking to your kids about what’s going on in the world. It used to be you could shelter them in your own way, but with Internet and phones and 24-hour news, you can’t avoid those conversations.