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Sesame Street being too "woke" is nothing new [1]

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Date: 2023-08-05  

Long before Ted Cruz lost his marbles over Big Bird tweeting that he got vaccinated against the coronavirus — never mind that Trump took credit for a vaccine for that disease in humans, and also forget how Trump insulted Cruz’s wife — there were “conservatives” getting angry at Sesame Street for being what would later be called “woke.”

Sometimes the term “controversial” would be used. The controversy when Sesame Street débuted in 1969 was apparently that black people exist. More precisely, that black people can coexist with white people as equals rather than as servants.

Ugh, the diversity, it’s too much!

In a cast group shot from the 1970s, the Count counts two black men and two black women mixed among white people and Muppets like Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch. Jake Rossen for Mental Floss through Firefox’s Pocket Worthy:

The series had only been on the air for a few months when the newly formed Mississippi Authority for Educational Television (also known as the State Commission for Educational Television) held a regularly scheduled meeting in January 1970. The board had been created by the state legislature with appointees named by Governor John Bell Williams to evaluate shows that were set to air on the state’s Educational Television, or ETV, station. The five-member panel consisted of educators and private citizens, including a teacher and a principal, and was headed up by James McKay, a banker in Jackson, Mississippi.

Hmm. So the panel had a teacher and a principal, but it was headed up by a banker? And not just any banker.

McKay’s presence was notable for the fact that his father-in-law, Allen Thompson, had just retired after spending 20 years as mayor of Jackson. Highly resistant to integration in the city during his tenure in office, Thompson was also the founder of Freedom of Choice in the United States, or FOCUS, an activist group that promoted what they dubbed “freedom of choice” in public schools—a thinly veiled reference to segregation. ... Entering this climate was Sesame Street, the show pioneered by Joan Ganz Cooney, a former journalist and television producer who became the executive director of the Children’s Television Workshop. On the series, the human cast was integrated, with black performers Matt Robinson and Loretta Long as Gordon and Susan, respectively, appearing alongside white actors Jada Rowland and Bob McGrath. The children of Sesame Street were also ethnically diverse.

And the commission was all white. After some back and forth, they decided, in a 3-to-2 vote, to prohibit ETV from airing Sesame Street. Never mind that this show, considered innocuous by jaded teenagers, was provided free to all public TV stations. Airing the show would have no effect on ETV’s $5 million budget.

The members who were outvoted were plainly unhappy with the outcome and leaked the decision to The New York Times, which published a notice of the prohibition days later along with a quote from one of the board members. “Some of the members of the commission were very much opposed to showing the series because it uses a highly integrated cast of children,” the person, who did not wish to be named, said. “Mainly the commission members felt that Mississippi was not yet ready for it.” The reaction to such a transparent concession to racism was swift and predictably negative, both in and out of Mississippi. Board members who spoke with press, usually anonymously, claimed the decision was a simple “postponing” of the show, not an outright ban.

Postponed? Wonder how poet Amanda Gorman would feel about that? The board members tried to frame the “postponement” in a more positive light, arguing that Mississippi’s regressive legislators might hurt the show before it could find its audience.

But the backlash was too much to ignore. The board reversed their earlier decision and half a century’s worth of generations of children in Mississippi and throughout the world have grown up with Sesame Street.

Of course Sesame Street and other children’s shows have continued to draw the wrath of Republicans who have no serious policy proposals to offer on issues they supposedly care about, like securing the border or creating jobs.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/5/2185367/-Sesame-Street-being-too-woke-is-nothing-new

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