What will it take to fix 'The Bachelor' franchise's racism?
"Will you accept this rose?"
A simple, oft-heard question on ABC's "The Bachelor" franchise, the bachelors and bachelorettes hand roses to contestants they want to keep dating. But perhaps the response should be another question: "Yes, but can you forgive me for my racist social media posts a few years ago?"
Racism is ingrained across many American institutions – which is why the trickling, troubling revelations about problematic contestants who appear on "The Bachelor" franchise shouldn't come as a shock. The real shock about racism and "The Bachelor," as we've seen this season, is how long it's taken for meaningful action to happen.
Matt James' season of "The Bachelor" was meant to show signs of progress – he's the first Black male lead in 25 seasons, joined by the most diverse cast in franchise history. Instead, the historic season found itself at the center of the show's biggest controversy to date, heading toward Monday's finale marred by racist comments and actions from this season's front-runner and the show's longtime host.
Rachael Kirkconnell, the front-runner, faced backlash after fans found she had "liked" Confederate flag-related TikTok videos and attended an Antebellum-themed fraternity formal in 2018.
Days later came an "Extra" TV interview between the show's longtime host, Chris Harrison, and Rachel Lindsay – who in 2017 became the first Black "Bachelorette" – in which Harrison slammed the "woke police," called for "compassion" for Kirkconnell and excused the party she attended as a product of a different time.
"It's not a good look, ever," Lindsay countered. "She's celebrating the old South. If I went to that party, what would I represent?"
Following backlash from the interview, Harrison announced last month he would be temporarily "stepping aside" from his role as host, though he said on March 4 he "plan(s) to be back" and is "excited to be part of that change." Representatives at producer Warner Bros. and ABC did not respond to requests for comment or interviews with Harrison and James.
As the host and franchise reflect on how to more fully address issues of racism, former contestants and fans are calling for specific actions they believe will bring positive change: further diversifying behind the scenes and being more conscientious about not giving the bulk of screen time to contestants with dangerously problematic views.
Chelsea Vaughn, a Brooklyn, New York-based model who was eliminated earlier this season, told USA TODAY the Harrison interview was "really hard to watch."
"Especially as a Black woman, I can just imagine myself sitting in (Lindsay's) shoes, and I don't know how she dealt with it so well and professionally, but she was amazing," says Vaughn, 28. "I couldn't even get through the interview, to be honest, because it was so upsetting to me that I had to turn it off."
Harrison's words were disappointing but ultimately not surprising, says Taylor Nolan, a psychotherapist who in 2017 appeared on Nick Viall's season of "The Bachelor" and "Bachelor In Paradise."
"My first reaction was at first kind of laughing. Like, is this for real?" Nolan says. "No way that we're actually getting this out of him. And then part of me felt relief: 'Wow, people are going to see and there's no way people are going to just excuse this.' But a lot of people don't see anything wrong with that."
Lindsay has become the de facto voice to weigh in on racial issues involving "The Bachelor" and its spin-offs: She called for the franchise to cast its first Black "Bachelor" and called out former "Bachelorette" Hannah Brown last year after she recorded herself on a livestream singing the N-word. A smattering of other former cast members have shown support, but Lindsay is often alone – or the loudest voice – in calling out racism on the shows.
On Feb. 26, she deactivated her Instagram account after receiving a deluge of hateful comments in the aftermath of her Harrison interview. Three days later, "Bachelor" executive producers condemned the "unimaginable hate... rooted in racism" that Lindsay faced in working for "racial equity and inclusion."
"I really don't think it's fair that all of this responsibility has had to be placed onto Rachel Lindsay," Vaughn says. "She's amazing, and I think that her ability to be this person and this voice for seemingly every Black person, or every diverse person in this franchise for the past five or six years … is astounding."
After Lindsay's interview with Harrison, six of this season's contestants drafted a statement denouncing "any defense of racism" and showing support for Lindsay's advocacy, which many other contestants then shared. Cast members of the previous season of "The Bachelorette," including winner Dale Moss shared a similar statement, and dozens of other alums weighed in, too.
Following the uproar, Harrison issued an apology and announced he would be "stepping aside for a period of time" and wouldn't take part in the post-finale "After The Final Rose" special on Monday, which was pre-taped earlier this month. (The rest of this season was taped months ago.) Emmanuel Acho, a former NFL player, Fox Sports analyst and the author of "Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man," will step in.
Kirkconnell apologized on Feb. 11 for her actions, which she called "offensive and racist." Following further backlash from fans and former contestants for not taking real action beyond a statement, she addressed followers two weeks later in a 7-minute video asking others to stop defending her, and sharing educational resources "to explain my offenses."
"I've come to realize that sitting aside and hiding in the corner and (avoiding) being called performative, that doesn't help anyone or anything," she said.
James spoke out on Feb. 22, writing on Instagram his "greatest prayer is that this is an inflection point that results in real and institutional change for the better."
Past instances of racism prompted a fan-led diversity campaign
Historically, minority contestants rarely made it past the first few weeks. Some seasons featured no minority contestants, while most others included only a few.
Earlier contestants have also come under fire for racist comments. Lee Garrett was scrutinized in 2017 for referring to Kenny King, a Black contestant, as "aggressive" before Lee's past racist and sexist tweets resurfaced. In 2018, "Bachelorette" winner Garrett Yrigoyen came under fire after fans discovered he had "liked" racist and transphobic Instagram posts.
Most racism scandals connected to the show occur outside of filming, though Nicole Julien, a 42-year-old fan from Washington, D.C., noted the racially-coded dog whistle language Jubilee Sharpe faced on Ben Higgins' 2016 season. One contestant said Sharpe, who is Black, couldn't marry Higgins because she wouldn't be "friends with all the other soccer moms."
Equity for the franchise wasn't going to happen overnight, but some "Bachelor" fans are demanding more inclusivity from the franchise.
Many fans came together via the online petition Bachelor Diversity Campaign last summer to demand, among other changes, a Black Bachelor, which may have helped spur James' casting.
Brett Vergara, of New York, and Ayanna Maddox-Semper, of Florida, are among 13 members who regularly work on the campaign, which aims to encourage the franchise to be more inclusive. Vergara is a self-professed "sucker for dating culture" and started watching the show in 2016.
Maddox-Semper is Black and is dating someone who's Black, and says it's mind-boggling that hasn't surfaced onscreen more often. "Why are we not seeing what is portrayed everywhere else around us on TV?" she says. "Just makes no sense to me."
Only three of the 43 leads in the franchise's 19-year history have been Black. And Black Americans have few options when it comes to meaningful representation in reality competition series.
"For a long time within reality television, 'The Bachelor' has commanded the cultural conversation, so it's forced in front of me; I can choose to ignore it, or I can engage with it," says fan Joy Ofodu, 24, who lives near San Fransisco. "If I only watched programs in which we were adequately and beautifully represented, I would have five shows to watch."
Progress is being made, but 'why has this taken this long?'
Major reparations have not been swift, but the most recent seasons of "The Bachelorette" and "The Bachelor" demonstrate signs of progress.
Producers vowed in September to take measures to shut down "racism, bullying and hate in all of its forms" on social media.
During Tayshia Adams' tenure as "The Bachelorette" last fall, she and contestant Ivan Hall had a candid conversation about the Black Lives Matter movement and their experiences with racism. Fans online said they "never thought" they'd see the show tackle such a topic.
"I did not expect a rapid diversity, inclusion and equity overhaul from 'The Bachelor' with the arrival of Rachel Lindsay, Tayshia (Adams) and Matt James," Ofodu says.
This season, Vaughn opened up to James about deciding to shave her head after years of feeling like she had to conform to white beauty standards.
After growing up watching the show, Vaughn was amazed at the response, not only from Black women but those of different races who went through chemotherapy or dealt with alopecia and found solace in her words.
"Before the last couple of seasons, there really weren't that many women of color on the show at all," she says. "So where I'm actually having a substantial relationship with the lead and sharing my feelings and sharing something that important … I didn't know if I would even make it to that point."
Julien has watched since the series' first season in 2002 because she went to college with one of the first contestants. But she complains of the slow pace of real change in representation. "Anything that happened in the 2010s or later as a first is a bad look. Why has it taken this long?"
Where do we go from here?
Vaughn, like other fans and former contestants, notes that the crux of diversity efforts so far seems to be on casting. In that vein, this season has been a success: 25 of the 37 women on James' season identify as minorities, and Abigail Heringer became the first deaf contestant in franchise history.
"I think the casting part, like, nailed it – we got that down," Vaughn says. "They cast amazing, diverse, incredible women. But I think it needs to go a lot further. There has to be diversity behind the camera: production, whoever's in the editing room, whoever is at the top making the main decision. … A lot of things could have been prevented or called out if there was somebody that looks like me in one of these rooms."
Others say producers should do a better job avoiding cast members with past offensive social media posts. Nolan says her vetting process was thorough – though days after speaking with USA TODAY, she apologized for newly-resurfaced tweets from 2011-13 with racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic language, which other members of the franchise swiftly condemned.
Still, Nolan noted that she had spoken with other former contestants and reality experts who noted that the photo of Kirkconnell wasn't found through her own Instagram account and therefore could have been missed in the search. But she also welcomes the idea of a more nuanced discussion of issues rather than eliminating biased perspectives from the show altogether.
"The people who maybe hold these more problematic harmful perspectives in life, I don't think the goal is to just remove them from the franchise entirely," Nolan says. "I think where the emphasis and the focus should be is on the editing and on the storytelling, the amount of screen time, who you're allowing to build a platform."
Obama, Alton Brown apologized for harmful views. Should we forgive past problematic views?
Vergara and Maddox-Semper say boycotting the show isn't the answer, either. As Maddox-Semper puts it, if a house was burning and you looked away from it, the house would still be burning.
In an effort to make the contestant pool reflective of the country, Julien says producers need to recognize racial inequity. The more people of different identities set foot in the mansion, the more chances for one of them to be the next "Bachelor" or "Bachelorette." The leads of each season are typically cast from previous seasons of the franchise, so a runner-up on "The Bachelor" might become the next "Bachelorette."
Fan Talia Cadet started watching during Sean Lowe's season in 2013, enamored by the show's romance. That appeal has soured for her given controversy, starting with Juan Pablo Galavis' season in 2014, when the show claimed progress by casting a white Latino man. (Galavis would go on to face criticism for saying he opposed having a gay or bisexual "Bachelor" star because it would set a "bad example for children to watch" and that homosexuals are "pervert(ed).")
Ofodu would like to challenge the franchise to cast the next 10 to 20 leads from underrepresented populations.
"The Bachelor," of course, isn't alone when it comes to its lack of diversity or problematic contestants Other reality shows such as "Survivor" and "Big Brother" thrive on conflict – that's what drives viewers to tune in. Controversy equals more screen time and more viewers, whether it's on- or off-camera. But "The Bachelor" is unique in the frequency of its racism controversies. Problems arise when those racist comments are treated as more fodder for reality TV drama, rather than a serious issue that threatens those on the receiving end.
"There has been clearly a need to put white fragility and comfort over inclusion within this franchise and within many others," she says.
#FireChrisHarrison campaign gets mixed reactions
A Change.org petition calling for Harrison to be fired has garnered more than 43,000 signatures over the past month ("The Bachelor" averages six million viewers this season). Fans and alumni express mixed feelings about whether removing Harrison permanently is the right move.
"I don't really think that Chris Harrison is the problem," Vaughn says. "The larger problem is a systemic issue in the franchise."
Vaughn and Hall are among former contestants who have said they would feel uncomfortable returning to the show without seeing significant changes. Cadet isn't sure if she'll continue watching the show, mostly because Lindsay has decided she wants to step away from being affiliated with the franchise once her contract expires.
"I am not a victim here," Harrison said March 4 on "Good Morning America." "I made a mistake and I own that. Racism, oppression, these are big, dynamic problems and they take serious work. And I am committed to that work."
Nolan, along with some other former contestants and fans, says that for Harrison to return implies to minority contestants that their feelings and concerns are not valued or supported.
"I wish people would consider (it) from contestants' points of view," Nolan adds. "White people may not be able to relate, but I hope they can trust us."
If Harrison were to actually leave the show, Ofodu isn't sure how much of a difference that would make.
Nolan has dedicated efforts on social media to speaking out about racial injustices and calling on white members of the franchise to step up – particularly those who have promised in the past to act as better allies to the minority community. She has cited Brown, who vowed in her apology video last year to be "part of the solution." Brown shared an Instagram story video on Feb. 13 urging others to "value and encourage under-represented voices" and said she remained "committed to the work" without explicitly condemning racist actions.
But Nolan says not every fan should feel compelled to push back. "We have such a burden on ourselves to put in this work as people of color," Nolan adds. "Don't feel guilty if you don't have the energy or the desire to speak out about this. Because it's harmful. It's triggering. It's really traumatizing."
Contributing: Cydney Henderson, Elise Brisco
More: Chris Harrison won't resign from hosting 'The Bachelor'; Rachel Lindsay reacts to apology
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Bachelor': Dating franchise has racism problem. Here's how to fix it
