Rachel Lindsay is detailing her rocky relationship with the Bachelor franchise.
However, it wasn’t until after the conclusion of her season of the show when she “started to feel uneasy” about the franchise.
“She got engaged to Garrett Yrigoyen, who had a history of liking offensive tweets,” Lindsay writes of Kufrin’s now-ex.
“They chose someone with a pubescent haircut: Peter ‘Make Sure You Know I’m Half-Latino’ Weber.
It wasn’t until May 2020, when a video of former Bachelorette Hannah Brown singing the N-word came to light, that things became “untenable,” though.
We were living in a world where corporations posted black squares, vowed to donate money, and aligned themselves with Black Lives Matter,” Lindsay writes.
“The focus was on his white mother and his popular white friends in the franchise.
“I knew my relationship with The Bachelor was over in February 2021, when Chris Harrison, the host and face of the franchise, showed his true self on national television,” she writes.
“He said all this with a passion I had never seen him assert.
“By the time that segment with Chris aired, I was known as the contestant who was always starting trouble,” she writes.
“Some fans on social media started trying to dig up dirt on me.
In the front, there were three chairs: two for the executive producers and one for me,” she recalls of the casting process.
Nick said he did not want to sleep with any women because he had been so sexualized on Bachelor in Paradise.
I talked about the fact that there were no Black people behind the camera and how I wanted that to change.
Let’s say the producers didn’t know about the tweets — you still brought on a guy who has no experience with Black people, who is from Mississippi.
Lindsay adds, “There’s always one story line that causes drama each season, and for their first Black lead, they allowed it to be a racist one.
As she got further and further into the season, Lindsay felt that she had “nobody to talk to,” a feeling that continued through her finale, when she was left with Peter Kraus, who’s white, and her now-husband, Bryan Abasolo, who’s Latino.
It was difficult to break up with him — when you toy with the idea of it could be this person, and you realize it’s not, it’s hard.
“As I’ve continued to watch the show, I’ve realized they don’t seem to understand the stereotypes that are placed on Black men.
I am no longer the face of what is diverse,” she writes.
The thing is, the day I went on the show, I didn’t wake up and say, You know what? I’m going to start standing up for myself,” she writes.