After One Episode, ‘The Bachelor’ Already Has a Racism Scandal

Bachelor Nation will never know peace. We’re just 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 latest racism scandal. She posted her apology Tuesday via Instagram Stories, writing that she “used misguided arguments on Twitter to defend a student who dressed in Blackface as Tupac for Halloween.”

Like most Bachelor-related scandals, this one’s apparently been brewing online for a while. Months ago, a Reddit user posted screenshots that appeared to display the future contestant defending another student who’d worn blackface, as well an image in which she wore a Trump campaign sticker.

“The journey to love is filled with lessons and these lessons are also made on our journey of growth,” Blitzer wrote, in part, as first reported by Us Weekly. “In my past, I have made some uneducated, ignorant and frankly, wrong comments on my social media accounts.”

“I am deeply sorry to those I have hurt, especially those within the Black community, not because these screenshots have resurfaced, but because I ever shared these harmful opinions at all,” Blitzer continued. “Time and age do not excuse my actions, but this is not a reflection of who I am today.”

“I do not stand by or condone the damaging opinions and behaviors I have shared during that stage of my life,” she concluded, “and will forever regret making those offensive remarks.”

‘Boring’ Bachelor Kisses 8 Women During Premiere, Sends One Home Early

At this point, racism scandals are reliable annual events in Bachelor Nation. Last year, Bachelorette winner Erich Schwer apologized for a photo that resurfaced from his high school yearbook in which he was wearing blackface. In 2021, longtime face of the show Chris Harrison lost his hosting gig after defending Bachelor winner Rachael Kirkconnell’s decision to wear blackface at an Antebellum South-themed party held in 2018 while she was in college. Former contestant Lee Garrett’s easily searchable tweets comparing the NAACP to the Ku Klux Klan somehow did not prevent him from joining Rachel Lindsay’s season—in which she made history as the first Black Bachelorette. Also: Who could forget Garrett Yrigoyen, whose problematic Instagram “likes”—including posts mocking immigrants and Parkland students—overshadowed most of Becca Kufrin’s Bachelorette outing? And that’s saying nothing about how disastrously the show bungled Matt James’ season as the first Black Bachelor in 2020.

Like Yrigoyen and Schwer before her, it appears Blitzer might go far this season. She won the coveted First Impression Rose during Monday’s Bachelor premiere—in which the notoriously “boring” Shallcross somehow managed to kiss not one, not two, but eight of his contestants. Once again, it looks like Bachelor contestants are going to spend the next few weeks reconciling the show’s on-screen excitement with the bleaker, far less amusing real-world scandals that underpin it. It’s nothing fans haven’t done before, but it sure would be nice if someone could figure out a way to stop this from happening every season.

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