After One Episode, ‘The Bachelor’ Already Has a Racism Scandal
Bachelor Nation won’t ever know peace. We’re only one episode into The Bachelor Season 27, and Zach Shallcross’ frontrunner—24-year-old Texas native Greer Blitzer—is already apologizing for the franchise’s newest racism scandal. She posted her apology Tuesday through Instagram Tales, writing that she “used misguided arguments on Twitter to defend a pupil who wearing Blackface as Tupac for Halloween.”
Like most Bachelor-related scandals, this one’s apparently been brewing on-line for some time. Months in the past, a Reddit user posted screenshots that appeared to show the long run contestant defending one other pupil who’d worn blackface, as nicely a picture through which she wore a Trump marketing campaign sticker.
“The journey to like is crammed with classes and these classes are additionally made on our journey of development,” Blitzer wrote, partially, as first reported by Us Weekly. “In my previous, I’ve made some uneducated, ignorant and admittedly, incorrect feedback on my social media accounts.”
“I’m deeply sorry to these I’ve harm, particularly these inside the Black neighborhood, not as a result of these screenshots have resurfaced, however as a result of I ever shared these dangerous opinions in any respect,” Blitzer continued. “Time and age don’t excuse my actions, however this isn’t a mirrored image of who I’m at the moment.”
“I don’t stand by or condone the damaging opinions and behaviors I’ve shared throughout that stage of my life,” she concluded, “and can perpetually remorse making these offensive remarks.”
‘Boring’ Bachelor Kisses 8 Women During Premiere, Sends One Home Early
At this level, racism scandals are reliable annual events in Bachelor Nation. Final yr, Bachelorette winner Erich Schwer apologized for a photograph that resurfaced from his highschool yearbook through which he was carrying blackface. In 2021, longtime face of the present Chris Harrison lost his hosting gig after defending Bachelor winner Rachael Kirkconnell’s resolution to put on blackface at an Antebellum South-themed get together held in 2018 whereas she was in school. Former contestant Lee Garrett’s easily searchable tweets evaluating the NAACP to the Ku Klux Klan one way or the other didn’t stop him from becoming a member of Rachel Lindsay’s season—through which she made historical past as the primary Black Bachelorette. Additionally: Who may overlook Garrett Yrigoyen, whose problematic Instagram “likes”—together with posts mocking immigrants and Parkland college students—overshadowed most of Becca Kufrin’s Bachelorette outing? And that’s saying nothing about how disastrously the present bungled Matt James’ season as the primary Black Bachelor in 2020.
Like Yrigoyen and Schwer earlier than her, it seems Blitzer would possibly go far this season. She gained the coveted First Impression Rose throughout Monday’s Bachelor premiere—through which the notoriously “boring” Shallcross one way or the other managed to kiss not one, not two, however eight of his contestants. As soon as once more, it seems like Bachelor contestants are going to spend the subsequent few weeks reconciling the present’s on-screen pleasure with the bleaker, far much less amusing real-world scandals that underpin it. It’s nothing followers haven’t carried out earlier than, however it positive could be good if somebody may determine a method to cease this from occurring each season.
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