Sesame Street Welcomes First Asian-American Muppet To Fight Against Discrimination

Sesame Street has been around since 1969, and since then it has been teaching children a thing or two about a plethora of subjects. It has also been the cornerstone of children’s television and has a history of being sensitive to the needs of viewers throughout the years. Now, they’re proving that they’re paying attention to what’s needed most these days.

They are gearing up to premiere a very new character and the first-ever Asian-American character on the 25th of November – Thanksgiving Day – in a special entitled See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special. The character’s name is Ji-Young, a Korean-American 7-year old Muppet.

Kay Wilson Stallings, who is executive vice president of creative and production for the Sesame Workshop stated:

“Today, we uphold Sesame Workshop’s mission by empowering children and families of all races, ethnicities and cultures to value their unique identities, continues ‘Sesame Street’s’ proud legacy of representation with an engaging story that encourages empathy and acceptance.”

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Forty-one year-old Kathleen Kim, an actress and the person behind the Muppet was a lifelong fan of the show and has been working to this end for quite some time in the aforementioned Sesame Workshop.

“I feel like I have a lot of weight that maybe I’m putting on myself to teach these lessons and to be this representative that I did not have as a kid.”

Sesame Workshop, a non-profit organization, started up in 2020 after the passing of George Floyd and the subsequent issues and protests that arose because of it and the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, reports nypost.com. This is a way to “meet the moment,” says Stallings. Ji-Young loves skateboarding, soccer and playing guitar, but what’s really cool here, is that she will bring aspects of her Korean heritage to the show.