SortaNoTV: Are Theme Park People in 'Sesame Street' Muppet Costumes Racist?

[Mark Jeffries]

A Twitter video from Black "digital strategist" Leslie Mac showing the costumed "Sesame Street" Latina Muppet character Rosita waving off Mac's 4th birthday-celebrating daughter and her Black friend after high-fiving white kids at Sesame Place, the suburban Philadelphia theme park licensed by Sea World from Sesame Workshop, has received the predictable hubbub from the tweetybox, including similar videos from others and celeb comments from former Destiny's Child Kelly Rowland and Audra McDonald--the park says that the wave-off is a symbol indicating a policy that characters cannot hold on to kids for photo taking and invited the Mac family for a private meet-and-greet, Mac says that the invitation never happened and accused them of lying, Sesame Workshop says that they are asking the park to initiate anti-racism training for employees:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/sesame-place-viral-video-1235182473/

And I assume the rightwing channels are having a field day with this.

[M-D November]

So I have two takes on this:

1) This comes directly from a friend, whose daughter works in the entertainment department at Sesame Place (although not as Rosita) - to summarize:

• The performer (male) playing Rosita is black, so unless he's self-hating, it's unlikely the incident was racially motivated. 
• There was a woman who asked him to hold her baby. That's against policy - hence the waive-off.
• This was happening in the middle of a parade, and he had to hit his mark for choreography that was coming up. Characters must be on the floats at a certain time for them to progress down the parade route. 
  

2) Having worked at a theme park myself (albeit not in costume), I have some idea of the narrow field of vision these costumed characters actually have.  Given what we see in Mac's video, it's entirely possible that "Rosita" didn't even see the kids hovering just in front of her.

Either way, this is ridiculous.  There are so many opportunities for character interactions, to say this one moment broke your kid to the point that you need to lawyer up?  Ugh.

[Bob Jersey]

TMZ again: With some help from Jesse Jackson and his organization, they invited the family back... sorry, they said...

https://www.tmz.com/2022/09/01/sesame-place-invites-black-family-back-children-too-traumatized/ (link)     B

M-D November, to Mark Jeffries, July 21st: