Change.org Petition - Demand Sesame Place And Parent Company SeaWorld Hold Their Racist Employees Accountable

Demand Sesame Place And Parent Company SeaWorld Hold Their Racist Employees Accountable

Tamika Mallory started this petition to Mark Swanson, and it now has 29,147 signatures

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This petition was started to let SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment know that racial discrimination will not be tolerated at Sesame Place or their other theme parks. We demand that SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment take immediate action to remedy the problems caused when their racist employee ignored black children subjecting them to emotional trauma and embarrassment. On Saturday, July 16th Jodi Brown, along with her family and friends, was left disappointed and outraged after experiencing racism in the worst kind of way at Sesame Place, a children’s theme and water park, located on the outskirts of Philadelphia.  Jodi’s daughter and niece, who are both of African American descent, received their first life lesson in RACISM! A video that was taken in anticipation of the 6-year-old girls being greeted by the character Rosita, turned into a video showing the “Sesame Street” character high-fiving and hugging white children but deliberately waving and saying “No!” to the African-American children when they reached out for high fives. The video depiction clearly demonstrates not only the character’s verbal denial of the young girls by telling them “No,” but it is further demonstrated by an accompanying hand gesture, making it perfectly clear that the intention of the performer was to not engage with the young girls. It was hoped that this was an accident and not racially motivated, however, a second video of another African-American child being ignored by Rosita has surfaced and strengthened our belief of racial discrimination. Rosita is seen in this video ignoring another African-American child and high-fiving and hugging white children. Please sign our petition to let SeaWorld and Sesame Place know that racism will not be tolerated and demand these actions are taken.  Sesame Place needs to apologize to these young children. SeaWorld fires all employees who have been video recorded racially discriminating and abusing Black children. SeaWorld identifies and fires all other racist employees. Sesame Place needs to provide company-wide employee training on the emotional scarring of children. SeaWorld provides annual mandatory company-wide bias training for their employees to ensure this does not continue to happen at the park, or SeaWorld conducts a racial bias audit of its company. SeaWorld places African Americans on its board of directors. SeaWorld creates a director of diversity and inclusion position, and that position is filled by an African American. SeaWorld invests in the African American community financially and equitably.  Take the next step and email the CEO of SeaWorld and let him know that we will not spend our dollars: Chief Executive Marc Swanson at marc.swanson@seaworld.com!

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