Rachel Lindsay says The Bachelorette featured Black men who ‘didn’t date Black women’
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Rachel Lindsay opened up about diversity aspects on The Bachelor franchise in a candid interview Monday, saying the show has a ‘casting issue.’
The 36-year-old lawyer and reality star spoke on Ziwe Fumudoh’s new Showtime series about things she experienced as the first Black lead on The Bachelorette four years ago.
I ‘learned as I was going through my season that several of the Black men on my season didn’t date Black women,’ the Dallas-born beauty said, adding that she had been ‘getting upset at the selection of men of color’ in her season.
She said that ‘the show found it interesting’ to cast Black men who ‘never dated a Black woman before.’
Lindsay said she told producers, ‘You think that’s interesting? That’s my life. I live that.’
Lindsay said that changes need to be made on both sides of the camera to achieve an element of diversity that’s been lacking since the series first hit the air in 2002.
‘That’s why I’m speaking out that you don’t need to diversify just your cast and your leads – you need to diversify the people behind the camera,’ she said.
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Fumudoh noted to Lindsay, ‘All three of the Black Bachelors and Bachelorettes have ended up with partners who are not of color,’ a group that includes Lindsay’s now husband Bryan Abasolo, who is of Colombian descent.
Lindsay said the aspect was something she ‘was worried about before’ going on the reality romance.
‘I think I got a little bit more grace because I was the first,’ she said, ‘and people were just excited that a person of color was in this role.’
She said that aspects like that reflected ‘how unfairly people of color are held to certain standards that their white counterparts aren’t.’
‘I think when the next person chose someone that wasn’t Black, and then by the time we got to the third one, it was like, “You know what they’re just not going to choose anybody that’s Black.”’
Lindsay spoke out about the issues surrounding the show earlier this year amid the row involving Chris Harrison’s defense of contestant Rachael Kirkconnell, who had been seen in resurfaced social media shots of her attending an 2018 antebellum party while in college.
Harrison told Lindsay on Extra that Kirkconnell was entitled to ‘a little grace, a little understanding, a little compassion’ amid the situation. The situation led to Harrison issuing an apology and saying he was stepping back from the series.
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