New Muppets Wes and Elijah teach kids about race

The father-son duo is part of Sesame Workshop’s Coming Together initiative, which provides families with the tools they need to build racial literacy and have open conversations with their kids.

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[Little_KingYT]

Elmo literally just asked, “Elmo wants to know, why you black doh?”

[EricRyder]

Susan and Gordon=African American
Maria and Luis= Hispanic
Mr. Hooper=Jewish
David=African American
Linda=Hearing Impaired
Olivia= African-American
and not to exclude Bob, Gina and Uncle Wally= Caucasian
not to mention Hiroshi and Alan an Leyla and Celina=Asian
Buffy, Cody, and Shelton=Native American
Jason Kingsley= Special Needs
My point is that I grew up on Sesame Street which has always been very diverse and inclusive where kids from all walks of life resided and we weren't indoctrinated but encouraged to love everyone regardless to whom he, she or they are. That includes the monsters, animals and and anything muppets who are a variety of colours and they all co-exist so there really isn't anything new.

[Cheycartoongirl]

Seaseme Street has LITERALLY been doing this since 1969! Why are they acting like it's some revolutionary thing now? Seaseme Street has ALWAYS been diverse and inclusive!

[luisenrique]

Teach your American kids that skin doesn’t matter but what’s inside like your personality and heart that defines you as a human being ❤️

[stevetemple]

I thought everything was Todd's fault 😕

[mellojoe]

Remember when people judged on content of character rather than skin? I still do that myself, because your skin color doesn’t mean you are a bad or good person, it’s what you do that defines who you are.

[haydeng.]

Ngl, I’m not a dad or anything but, I’d prefer my 5 year old not to pay attention to race and judge people on how they act.

[betterlatethannever]

This is why old school Sesame Street is still the best

[austinreed]

They’ve been doing this for decades, but this is the most ham-fisted one yet.

[gracehampton]

I just can’t help but feel They should have just been apart of the show not broken down to a science first. Kids shows do this every time and it doesn’t feel like it’s helping. Let’s not highlight our differences when that’s already obvious let’s highlight how we are similar and can live in harmony and use our differences as tools for growth. They usually just give a character a random rainbow color and a grade or hair that sorta matches the ethnicity or race of the person anyway and that I think is part of the charm of the show

[WolfingtonStanley]

I thought sesame street was already diverse
They have red yellow brown green and blue muppets
Black white Asian Hispanic people
The whole point of that was to show that colour was not an issue
I mean they had a talking mammoth for gods sake

[doritoreiss]

My daughter never cared about skin color until she saw Sesame Street making a huge production over it in February. Now she’s obsessed with skin color. Way to go “anti-racists.” Creating problems where there weren’t any. Adults need to stop drilling their adult problems into kid’s heads. 🤬

[sajateacher]

Do little kids really care what color a person is? No. Seems to me that us adults are the ones trying to divide humanity in terms of race, nationality, religion, and skin color.

[TorosAndMakis]

You do know there was already an episode about race right?

[m.r.keller]

Was that the main reason that Roosevelt Franklin was introduced over 50 years ago? I still miss him. He was fun to draw.

[cardinals]

Hope they teach them about not beating up Asians

[mlhill]

How does a character who lives with yellow, orange, blue, green and every other character never ask the question of why you are the the color you are until a new black puppet is created. So the whole time kids have been watching this and none of the characters care about what color the other puppets were or even what species they are but for some reason that’s not showing kids these things don’t matter. The lesson is already being taught to not give a crap or make any kind of issue or take notice of it until we force them to point it out. Makes no sense in that world sense they are all different already

[supersublimnails]

The episode basically said we are all the same and even though some may have more melanin or different hair texture we have more in common than differences.

[Connor_Vids]

1969-2021
Elmo: Why is Cookie Monsters Skin Blue? Why is Ernies Skin Orange? Why is Bird Birds Skin Yellow? (Never Happened)
2021:
Elmo: Why is Wes Black? (100% REAL)

[mamc]

Of course skin tone doesn’t matter! It’s a superficial quality much like outer beauty and eye color. We need to teach children to respect one another, regardless of what they look like.