Sesame Street and Inclusion

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

On March 23rd, Sesame Street introduced a new Black Muppet, Wesley Walker, and his father Elijah, to the long-running children’s television show.

Sesame Street, which has run since 1969, has a history of dealing with tough topics in a direct and age-appropriate way for its pre-school target audience. When the actor who played Mr. Hooper on the show, Will Lee, died, they built an episode around death and grief. In 2002, the South African version of the show introduced Kami, a 5-year-old HIV-positive Muppet, who was an orphan. The North American version of the show introduced Lily in 2011, who struggled with food and housing insecurity, Julia, introduced in 2015 and who became a regular in 2017, who had autism, and Karli, in 2019, who was in foster care and had a mother who had substance-use challenges.

Although the show has always highlighted the importance of multiculturalism and inclusivity, with a racially and ethnically diverse human cast, until now it hasn’t addressed racism overtly. In a March 23, 2021, article for Time magazine, Cady Lang notes, “Studies have indicated that people can begin recognizing racial difference as infants, but a 2019 study by Sesame Worship, conducted in partnership with the social-research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, found that many parents rarely or never discuss race or ethnicity with their kids.”

Lang spoke with Kay Wilson Stallings, the executive vice-president of creative and production for Sesame Workshop, who said, “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 way by being bold and explicit….we’ve got to do something about it, and the first way to address it is we need to define racism for 3-year-olds.” Wes and Elijah will talk about their racial identity and what it feels like to be Black in America.

Sesame Workshop and its team of educational advisors have developed Coming Together, a racial-justice initiative with an educational framework and curriculum, and is launching a set of resources, the ABC’s of Racial Literacy, designed to work towards “giving children, parents and educators the language and tools to talk more openly about race and racism”.

In introducing Wes and Elijah together, the organization felt it was important to create a father-son duo in order to be able to model conversations between a child and a parent rather than just within peer friendships. The characters have personalities and a backstory: Elijah is a 35-year-old meteorologist, loves running, being outdoors, watching movies and cooking with his family; Wes, who is 5, loves going to school and playing pretend with his friends. A further character, Wes’ mum Naomi, is currently in development.

Bradley Freeman, Jr., who voices Wes, says of his character, “He’s very imaginative, he’s very fun….The more I perform him the more I get to know him. Sometimes he gets a little lost in his own emotions because he comes from a family that’s very big on communicating how they feel – he’s able to communicate, but he’s also 5 years old. So sometimes things overwhelm him, and he can be angry or sad. So that’s where he really relies on his dad and his friends to make sure that he can come to the best solutions possible.”

Lang reports that, as part of the Coming Together initiative, “Elijah and Wes will be joined by 6-year-old Gabrielle and her 8-year-old cousin, Tamir, two other Black Muppets who also appeared in earlier broadcasts….In another new video, the ebullient teal monster Rosita, who has talked frequently about her Mexican identity and expressed her love for her abuela, confides in a friend about a racist incident she experiences while speaking Spanish in a grocery store. ‘Sometime people who speak another language get treated unfairly,’ her mother tells her, ‘but it doesn’t mean you have to stop being yourself.’ Then they have a conversation about how to handle incidents like that in the future.”

New free resources, in English and Spanish, include a new song celebrating unique identities and documentaries about real families who share how identity and race shape their lives.

The aim is to speak to a wide audience with this racial-justice programming, but there was a conscious decision to focus initially on Black and brown communities where systemic racism is felt most directly, but Sesame Workshop is making a long-term commitment to talking about these issues from all angles. The racial-justice programming will form part of Season 52 of Sesame Street, which will air in late 2021, and will be a focus of Seasons 53. They are developing a framework for parents of infants to 2-year-olds and are looking next at creating content focused on racial justice for 6- to 8-year-olds.