“The Bachelor” Producers Condemn Racist Fans
PC: Richard Shotwell | Associated Press
Reality television show “The Bachelor” is well known for having racial controversies. The most recent controversy sparked as pictures of Rachael Kirkconnell, a current contestant on “The Bachelor,” at a plantation-themed party when she was in college. It ended with racist fans bullying Rachel Lindsay, the first Black star of “The Bachelorette,” off of Instagram.
Lindsay became involved during an interview with “The Bachelor” host Chris Harrison. In the interview for “Extra.” Harrison defended Kirkconnell. Following the interview, fans took to social media to bully Lindsay. The harassment became so bad that she ended up deleting her account on the platform. In the wake of this, the executive producers for the show released a statement via the official twitter account.
“Rachel has received an unimaginable amount of hate and has been subjected to sever online bullying, which, more often than not, has been rooted in racism,” the executive producers wrote in a statement posted to the official Bachelor Nation Twitter account. “That is totally unacceptable.”
While this is one instance of bullying celebrities on social media, it is not uncommon. Following the release of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” fans of the franchise pushed actress Kelly Marie Tran off of her social media. Based on these instances, it is apparent that racism flourishes on the mostly-unregulated internet.
“It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them,” Tran said in an interview with ET Online. “And those words awakened something deep inside me — a feeling I thought I had grown out of. The same feeling I had when at 9, I stopped speaking Vietnamese altogether because I was tired of hearing other kids mock me.”
Because of the supposed anonymity that the internet provides, users feel as though they can spew hatred whenever they want. This happens because there are rarely consequences for cyberbullying, especially for people in the public eye. People who make a living through reality television and other forms of media are open to the mercy of the internet.