Certainly, Sesame Street is still a place of loving acceptance, right? Well, maybe the actual fictional place is, but definitely not the Sesame Place themepark, it would seem. Most recently, a video went viral of a performer in a Rosita costume blatantly ignoring two little black girls who were asking her for attention and then promptly walking over to someone in the crowd who had asked them to hold their baby, an act in itself which Sesame Place says is not permitted but allegedly this person wanted a photo op, so the proof is in the pudding, we guess.
You can see the little girls looking so disappointed as their favorite character blatantly ignored them and just walked right on past.
Sesame Place under fire for characters ignoring children of color
Sesame Workshop has issued a statement via social media saying that the performer in question was devastated by their actions and due to the costume did not even see the little kids that were begging for their attention
Of course, this was met with a lot of backlash by people on social media saying that this incident wasn’t the first time something like this has happened, there was even a video of a performer in a Bert costume that appeared to be softly slapping a young black girl acoss the face which prompted a look of surprise from her. Sesame Place had said that an investigation into this incident would be done, but no one’s heard anything back yet.
This is truly disenheartening, especially since the Sesame Street is meant to be such a culturally diverse place and was originally meant to build the self-worth of young, inner city black children. It was supposed to be a positive portrayal, and transcend a lot of the racism that was coming out of media at the time.
Sesame Street was made in 1969, so it paved the way for a lot of positive portrayals of black people in media, now to have this in 2022? Seems to be a step backward, even if it is unintentional. Maybe we should leave the themeparks to Disney and leave Sesame Street on the small screen, at least until some retraining can be done. Stay tuned!!!
