The Undeniable Black Roots of ‘Sesame Street’
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2023
⏱️ 3 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If it’s one thing whites will do, it’s steal something of ours and try to claim it as their own. But Sesame Street was explicitly made for us. Here’s the truth they don’t want you to know.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If it's one thing white people will do, it steals something of hours and tries to claim |
| 0:07.8 | it as their own, but Sesame Street was explicitly made for us. |
| 0:14.2 | Here's the truth they don't want you to know. |
| 0:16.9 | This is Two Minute Black History, what you didn't learn in school. |
| 0:26.4 | There's nothing blacker than sitting on a stoop in Harlem singing jazzy songs. |
| 0:32.2 | That was Sesame Street, and white people were big-time bad. |
| 0:37.8 | They showed up to the set in Riot Gear. |
| 0:47.6 | Black Psychiatrists were worried about the influence TV programming had on our children, |
| 0:53.8 | especially in a white supremacist country, so they did something incredible. |
| 0:59.9 | Sesame Street. |
| 1:02.0 | They created the legendary program for preschool-aged inner-city black children, and it was more than |
| 1:08.8 | about teaching the alphabet. |
| 1:11.4 | Chester Pierce, a psychiatrist and creator of the term micro-aggression, helped design |
| 1:17.5 | these shows Hidden Curriculum to build up our children's self-worth by including positive |
| 1:23.7 | images of us and embodying one of Martin Luther King's greatest dreams, Beloved Community. |
| 1:32.0 | Sesame Street was Black AF. |
| 1:35.5 | The show enlisted guest stars like Shoei Chisholm and Jackie Robinson to help teach lessons |
| 1:41.6 | and Nina Simone once sang Young, Gifted, and Black on the Famous Stoop. |
| 1:48.3 | But it's no surprise that whites were mad about all this blackness. |
| 1:52.4 | Mississippi Public Television once refused to air the show. |
| 1:57.3 | Parents fought back, and when the Sesame Street cast visited the state's capital, local |
| 2:02.4 | police showed up in Riot Gear. |
... |
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