Sesame Workshop Is Talking More Explicitly About Race—and Welcoming Two Black Muppets

TIME ^ | March 23, 2021 | Cady Lang

[Stravinsky]

(Excerpt from the middle as the beginning is just about the person who got the part)

The decision to give Wes and Elijah a racial identity—and to have them talk about what it’s like to be Black in America—represents a marked shift in approach. “After last summer with the racial unrest that happened and the murder of George Floyd, we collectively as an organization decided that the only way that we could go about dismantling racism was by being bold and explicit,” says Kay Wilson Stallings, the executive vice president of creative and production for Sesame Workshop. “People were working remotely. People were feeling a lot of emotions, and it was almost like everyone had the same realization. If not Sesame, who’s going to address this? It felt like everyone had the same, ‘Yes, we’ve got to do something about it, and the first way to address it is that we need to define racism for 3-year-olds.'”

As a result, Sesame Workshop and its team of educational advisers developed Coming Together, a racial-justice initiative with an educational framework and curriculum, which in the eight months since it launched has included a town hall with CNN about racism and protest, as well as a special, The Power of We, about speaking out against systemic inequality and prejudice. In one viral clip from the June town hall, Elmo’s dad Louie explains the demonstrations Elmo has been seeing outside his window: “On Sesame Street, we all love and respect one another. Across the country, people of color, especially in the Black community, are being treated unfairly because of how they look, their culture, race and who they are. What we are seeing is people saying enough is enough. They want to end racism.”

[packagingguy]

Ernie was orange. So maybe they could make him the bad guy.

[KDF48]

Is the content of their character going to matter? By the way, Iwo wrongs don’t make a right. Black bad boys do not represent the black working, family man. And those
negative generalizations and insults either way are dishonorable. Unlike, perversion, one does not choose their color, it is a gift from God.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

And they will sing great children's songs such as this.

[kaktuskid]

Buppets?

[Pilgrim's Progress]

Hello boys and girls. Foshizzle we gonna tell you about how to get a free TV. Just wait ‘til somebody in the hood gets shot by a white cop and then you can go shopping. For free! This is brought to you by the letter “N”!

[CtBigPat]

Silly liberals, so behind the times. Everyone knows Sesame Street would be over run with Hispanic muppets!

[headsonpikes]

Are their names Amos & Andy?

[hanamizu]

Were you replying to what I posted? I made no reference to the new characters, only to Sesame Street Workshop’s claim that Floyd was ‘murdered’ and that they made important decisions collectively.

[Magnum44]

Before Token, there was...

Buckwheat and Stimy

[NWFree]

What about the orange muppets being discriminated against?

[ifinnegan]

How sad they’ve forgotten all about Roosevelt Franklin.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ww3RAgnVOIs

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt8bl_4etAw

[DouglasKC]

Wait...you can’t have black people representing syrup or rice but you can have black puppets representing children’s entertainment? Now I’m just confused.

[ifinnegan]

Roosevelt Franklin.

[ifinnegan]

Roosevelt Franklin, what you say?

I say, the very first letter is the letter “A”

—

You know it. I never forgot Roosevelt Franklin.

[The MAGA-Deplorian]

Disney getting even more woke. How bout having an episode instead of a white muppiteers hand up his @ss, he just hoops Fenfen instead and sing about George Floyd.

[Freedom56v2]

I thought the whole purpose behind having Muppets of all different colors was to preclude and racial biases?

---

There you go again with your critical thinking...that is so 2000ish In 2021, it is call about critical race theory and being woke....

Isn’t it ironic that we must now focus on race as tots, but the woke don’t want us to focus/assign gender?

[subterfuge]

That’s the thing. They are going to screw it up. The black muppets can have no stereotypical dialect or anything that is obviously derived from the black American culture. So, the black muppets must be a sort of white Urkle without the pasty white skin.

[Albion Wilde]

A neighbor's 1-year-old back in the 1980s thought the Ernie muppet was black. The first time he "recognized" potentially black skin color was when his parents took him into a Toys"R"Us. He pointed at a black employee and said, "Ernie! Ernie!" until his mom recognized what he was saying. She said, "Bert's friend?" and the baby said yes.

Not much different than the skin color depicted in these new muppets:

So maybe Ernie has been hispanic all along.

[Libloather]