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.'”Īs 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. People were feeling a lot of emotions, and it was almost like everyone had the same realization. “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. ![]() ![]() 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. Julia, a Muppet with autism, first appeared in a digital storybook in 2015 before becoming a regular on the show in 2017. Karli, who was introduced in 2019, was in foster care and had a mother who struggled with addiction. Lily, who made her debut in 2011, struggled with food and housing insecurity. More recently, the organization has created Muppets who can help broach other difficult subjects through its Sesame Street in Communities initiative, which provides materials and media for kids in a wide range of situations. “Children don’t understand words like passing away.” In 2002, Takalani Sesame, the South African version of Sesame Street, introduced Kami, a 5-year-old HIV-positive Muppet, who was an orphan. “We were advised to take the direct approach,” Valeria Lovelace, the show’s former director of research, told the Associated Press at the time. Hooper, died in 1982, producers decided not to simply tell viewers he had gone away-instead they built an episode around death and grief. Since Sesame Street debuted more than five decades ago, in 1969, the show and the nonprofit’s related programming have dealt with tough topics in an age-appropriate way.
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