Before YouTube disabled comments for kids videos, many black commentors said they were happy Sesame Street was showing such diversity. The muppet is also named Segi, and she sings 'I really, really, really love my hair' and how she can wear her hair with a clip, bow, an afro or in cornrows. So in 2010, Mazzarino and Sesame Street designed a black muppet and wrote a song about loving your hair. Segi said negative things about herself and her hair. Joey Mazzarino, a lead writer and puppeteer at Sesame Street adopted a girl from Ethiopia named Segi. Their song 'Count Me In', which was written by Emily Pearl Kingsley and her son Jason (who has Down syndrome) is about accepting different types of people. In 1993, Sesame Street did an episode addressing racism. However, Sesame Street told her 'just be yourself'. Sonia Manzano, who played Maria from 1971 to 2015, said when she auditioned for Hollywood, they wanted her to do this Puerto Rican accent and play stereotypes. In fact, Sesame Street was once banned in some states because they showed black people on TV. From the early days, the show purposefully casted majority black and Hispanic actors, at a time when there were few people of color on television.
