In a famous speech, Martin Luther King said it was his dream that children would, “one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Sesame Street has decided to deny MLK’s dream because they’ve introduced black Muppets to show how skin color is more important than character. As an added bonus, these black characters are not even human, which is terribly racist.
NBC proudly reports:
“Sesame Street” is introducing two new Muppets, a Black father and son, as part of an effort to help children understand racial literacy.
The two Muppets, Wes and Elijah, were introduced in a short video created by Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind the long-running show. In the video, Elmo wants to know why Wes’s skin is brown, so his father Elijah explains the concept of melanin and how “the color of our skin is an important part of who we are,” according to a press release from Sesame Workshop.
And here is that video in case you have nothing better to do:
Wait a second, we we told that skin color doesn’t matter, but here are the Muppets saying it does. Also, while we’re here, would it be okay for some white Muppets to say: “Our white skin is important to our identity”? I’m pretty sure that would be racist.
“At Sesame Workshop, we look at every issue through the lens of a child. Children are not colorblind — not only do they first notice differences in race in infancy, but they also start forming their own sense of identity at a very young age,” said Sesame Workshop’s Senior Vice President Dr. Jeanette Betancourt.
Being colorblind used to be the peak of wokeness but now it’s bad not to judge people by the color of their skin.
Even the premise of this video is hard to take. Elmo was introduced in 1980 and we’re supposed to believe he’s never seen black people in his 41 years of existence? Plus, in this video, this is supposed to be the first time these characters meet and yet they know each other’s names. On top of being racist, this is just lazy writing.
The most racist thing about this however is that fact that these black characters are Muppets and not people. Sesame Street has long had actual humans on the show. Muppets are different than humans. They are large birds and grouchy garbage creatures. They are referred to as “monsters.”
There are no human Muppets. Even Rosita, who is the Mexican Muppet, is some kind of furry cave-dwelling creature. Maybe the closest thing to a human Muppet is The Count, but he’s a vampire bat.
These new black Muppets are not human, which is another way of saying they are subhuman, which is another way of saying this is racist.
Putting it all together, Sesame Street is saying skin color is tied to identity and blacks are not human. That sounds more like something that would be on a white supremacist website than a children’s show.
