The Bachelor franchise is yet again dealing with a racist controversy. A current Bachelorette contestant is apologizing for “ignorant and hurtful” past tweets about Black women.
Last year, ‘Bachelor Nation’ fans watched as contestant Rachael Kirkconnell‘s past on social media came back to haunt her.
The conversations surrounding her old social media posts took over the franchise, with host Chris Harrison defending her in a now infamous interview with Rachel Lindsay, which ultimately led to his departure from the franchise.
Just when the series seemed to be in the clear from more controversy this year, resurfaced tweets are again causing a storm in the current season of The Bachelorette.
Per People Magazine, contestant Justin Glaze is also coming forward to apologize for old tweets. Reportedly written when the reality personality was a teenager in 2009 and 2011, the tweets, which included jokes about Black women, homophobic slurs, and ones promoting colorism, resurfaced on Reddit. He wrote that he could never date someone “if she dark as @FlavorFlav” or has a “body big enough to be an avatar.” He also declared that movies needed a “well spoken caucasian cashier, they need to have a rude black b**** as a cashier once.”
Glaze made a recent appearance on the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast with Becca Kufrin and current Bachelorette co-host Tayshia Adams to issue an official apology.
He said, “As I reflect on everything I just went through with this whole journey, oftentimes people ask me what I took from it, and one of the biggest takeaways for me was just my personal growth, and one of those things is being able to hold myself accountable, which is something that historically I wasn’t able to do. So, I have no issue with owning up and apologizing from the bottom of my heart for the really hurtful words that I used.”
“The last thing that I want to do is run from it,” Glaze continued. “That’s not who I am. I just want to speak from the heart, and hopefully, people will get an understanding of where I was then versus where I am now.
When I look back at 14-year-old Justin, I was in high school and quite frankly I was the type of person who for whatever reason felt the need to fit in and say funny things and keep up with what my peers were doing and saying. The folks I had associated with would throw around really hurtful slurs that, at the time, I didn’t really think anything of.”
He concluded by saying, “Unfortunately, [at that time], my underdeveloped brain wasn’t thinking, ‘How can these words hurt people later on in life if they were to ever resurface?’ I’m not making any excuses. I need to be fully held accountable for my actions and my words. I fully understand that, and I just want people to know that I’ve changed immensely since then and I’m fully aware of the weight that my words carry.”
As theGrio previously reported, former Bachelorette and ‘Bachelor Nation’ personality Lindsay recently opened up about her experience being in the franchise.
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She shared in an op-ed in New York magazine, “The franchise has spent 19 years cultivating a toxic audience. They have constantly given it a product it wants: a midwestern/Southern white, blonde, light-eyed Christian. Not all viewers are like that…My Higher Learning co-host and I have divided it – there is a ‘Bachelor Nation,’ and there is a ‘Bachelor Klan.”’
Read her full op-ed here.
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