Photo Courtesy of Twitter (@thehill)
The Sesame Place incident became a topic discussed among The View hosts on Wednesday. Whoopi Goldberg claimed she contacted Sesame Street representatives and shared details regarding the conversation on the show.
“Basically, they said, ‘Listen, we’re all over this because our characters — the children must feel like these characters are the characters they expect them to be,” Goldberg said. “So, we’re all over this.”
Goldberg has worked with Sesame Street as a guest star, interacting with the characters Elmo and Hoots.
“Rosita has an excuse, though, doesn’t she? I believe she said something, like, ‘I couldn’t see correctly through the mask,'” The View host Joy Behar mentioned.
“They first said she couldn’t see,” host Sunny Hostin responded. “She happened to be able to see the other children who weren’t Black.”
The other hosts added that this has occurred more than once with the same character, calling the Rosita character a “repeat offender” and saying she needed to be fired.
As News Onyx previously reported, Sesame Place Philadelphia faced backlash last week over a viral video of the Sesame Street character Rosita disregarding two little Black girls after acknowledging other kids of a much lighter complexion.
Sesame Place Philadelphia, a licensed park partner of the Sesame Workshop non-profit, released a statement apologizing and wrote in the statement that Rosita’s actions had no racist intentions.
Sesame Workshop released a statement on Twitter apologizing for the incident saying, “we have been in contact with Sesame Place” and were assumed that Sesame Place would “conduct bias training and a thorough review of the ways in which they engage with the families and guests.”
Following the workshop’s statement, Sesame Place made a statement different from the one they put out last week.
“We sincerely apologize to the family for their experience in our park on Saturday; we know that it’s not ok,” they said. “We are taking actions to do better. We are committed to making this right. We will conduct training for our employees, so they better understand, recognize and deliver an inclusive, equitable and entertaining experience to our guests.”
The mother who posted the video of the encounter hired civil rights lawyer B’Ivory LaMarr, who called for a formal apology for the mother and the girls, along with the termination of the employee who played the Rosita character, in a press conference.