The popular children’s program Sesame Street announced Monday it would debut a new character, Ji-Young, as the program’s first Asian American Muppet. In addition to being surprised Muppets now have ethnicities — Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Elmo, and Cookie Monster are from what ethnic group? — the justification for doing this now is almost equally as baffling.
Apparently, the executive at Sesame Street felt the need to create Ji-Young after the events of 2020 and the rise in anti-Asian American hate crimes.
“Ji-Young will formally be introduced in ‘See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special,’” the Associated Press reported. “Simu Liu, Padma Lakshmi and Naomi Osaka are among the celebrities appearing in the special, which will drop Thanksgiving Day on HBO Max, ‘Sesame Street’ social media platforms and on local PBS stations.”
Alan Muraoka, an Asian American who portrays the owner of Hooper’s Store on Sesame Street, cited the racial attacks as a motivating factor for “the show to further address racism and discrimination.”
“People are seeing the need for it now, especially with the rise in American violence,” Muraoka said. “I think it’s absolutely because the nation as a whole woke up.”
It was nice of Muraoka to acknowledge the show’s leap into propaganda instead of education.
Muraoka also cited the killing of eight people in Atlanta area spas as an example of the type of hate against Asians that prompted the show to act. However, this is sheer propaganda. The killer, Robert Aaron Long, never said race had anything to do with the attacks but that he acted because of sexual addiction and his objection to the prostitution at the spas. Moreover, Long was not charged with any hate crime. This prompts one to ask: If racial discrimination in this country is so bad against Asians, why the need to lie about an incident to try to prove one’s point? Furthermore, why use this as an example when discussing the need for Asian representation among Muppets?
If racism was the motivating factor, people of Asian descent have been discriminated against since at least the late 19th century (see Chinese Exclusion Act).
Sesame Street first aired on Nov. 10, 1969. It is November 2021. It took 52 years to create a character representative of one of the country’s largest ethnic groups? And it only happened because of a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes? What were the executives at Sesame Street doing all of this time?
