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'Sesame Place' Apologizes over Racial Incident with Black Child (Video)


Wed 20 Jul 2022 | 07:25 PM
Omnia Ahmed

Sesame Street theme park apologized after a video posted on Instagram showed a costumed character waving off two six-year-old Black girls during a parade.

In the video, the character Rosita was seen high-fiving a white child and woman, then gesturing “no” and walking away from the two girls who had their arms stretched out for a hug and high-five during the parade at Sesame Place in Langhorne, outside Philadelphia.

https://twitter.com/LeslieMac/status/1548727928476901376

“I will never step foot in Sesame Place ever again,” Jodi Brown, the mother of one of the girls said online.

Moreover, the family’s lawyer, B’Ivory LaMarr, stated that the family was appalled and disturbed by the incident and “the injuries propagated to their children”.

In an initial statement, Sesame Place said the park and its employees stood for “inclusivity and equality in all forms”. The statement also explained that performers sometimes miss requests for hugs because the costumes they wear make it difficult to see at lower levels.

“The Rosita performer did not intentionally ignore the girls and is devastated by the misunderstanding,” the statement read.

Nevertheless, many people expressed outrage online and some called for a boycott of the amusement park.

The park issued a second statement on Monday, apologizing again and promising that it was “taking action to do better”. Among those efforts would be inclusivity training for employees.

Both statements and the video triggered a stark response on social media, which LaMarr said helped shed a light on “the existence of these issues”.

“A lot of African Americans tend to become very passive because we, unfortunately, are accustomed to dealing with this type of racism in various spaces,” LaMarr said.

“You would expect a reputable organization the one as well revered as Sesame Street and Sesame Place to stand on those principles and values in which they portray,” he added. “Instead, what this family saw was a company that comes out and they’re very dismissive of the harms that were caused.”