October 15th 2023.
Actor Anthony Anderson was honored at the 2023 Black Men XCEL Summit this week. The yearly event is hosted by BLACK ENTERPRISE and aims to celebrate Black men in business and provide networking opportunities and tools for personal and professional development.
The three-day event in Miami from Oct. 11 to Oct. 13 included over 40 speakers and a series of break-out sessions and leisure activities. Anderson participated in a fireside chat moderated by BE President Earl G. Graves Jr., and discussed how him and show creator Kenya Burris developed the concept for the Emmy Award-winning show, “Black-ish”.
The actor recalled how his 12-year-old son said he didn’t feel Black due to the lifestyle differences of his relatives living in South Central Los Angeles, and the negative experiences of Black men he saw on the news. Anderson told his son that “being able to go to private school, being able to live in the neighborhoods that you live in and being able to do the things that we do, that doesn’t make you any less Black.”
Barris joked about having a “Black-ish” family and decided that this would be the name of the show, which Anderson noted they expected some pushback for. But they decided to “dig into the trenches and fight the network to keep our name and we don’t have to”.
“Black-ish” ran for eight seasons and received several awards, including a Peabody Award, three Critics Choice Awards, two Golden Globe, an Emmy, and six NAACP Image Awards, making them the highest awarded show in NAACP Image Award History. Anderson was also one of six honorees at this year’s XCEL summit, which included Shannon Brown, CEO of BCS Consulting; David Grain, CEO of Grain Management; and Chris Womack, president and CEO of Southern Company.
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