Thanks to all who tuned into the IG Live Ashley and I did last night. It wasn’t an easy conversation, and judging by a lot of the mentions under my tweet last Thursday in regards to Rachael attending an Old South formal, I’m guessing there are plenty that still don’t understand what the issue is. If that’s your take, I suggest you listen to the live (which I’ve posted below), or, just do some reading about the history of how the Old South formals came to be, what they represent, the Kappa Alpha Order, etc. There’s plenty to follow up on as to why this event is rooted in racism. And again, if you think that because just because people showed up to the event doesn’t mean their racist, please watch our video below. It goes a lot deeper than a surface level question like that. I’m not going to try and pretend I’m some sort of historian on this. I’ve made that perfectly clear. But I am willing to learn and educate myself more on this, which I’ve tried to do these last couple weeks. Some of the stuff I’ve come across has been pretty eye opening. So all we ask is to be open minded to discussion, rather than immediately becoming defensive when people start talking about race. It’s the only way race relations are going to improve in this country.
Here is the live from last night in case you missed it. It’s also on my IGTV on Instagram as well:
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Here is the Taylor Nolan podcast called “White People” that I referred to during the live in case you never listened. This really is a must listen when she speaks with Robin DiAngelo. Here’s also a great interview Robin does about her book that breaks down racism in a way that I’m guessing 95% of people don’t look at it. And the book I discussed in the Live is called “So You Wanna Talk About Race” that you can purchase here About halfway through the book and really asks a lot of great questions surrounding race that, again, I’m guessing most people have either never thought about or spent more than a few minutes in thought about.
Chris Harrison took to Extra last night and spoke with Rachel Lindsay about a few things going on this season. First lets discuss a couple topics in this interview he did, most notably Katie as “Bachelorette” and Heather showing up:
So when asked if Katie was the “Bachelorette” Chris’ answer was that she was not named the “Bachelorette” at the “Women Tell All” taping. No one was. Well yeah. I corrected that in my tweet on Monday and in my column yesterday. Thought that was an interesting answer that he just focused on that part of my tweet, but not that there are reports Katie will be named the “Bachelorette.”
Then the Heather stuff, he says they told her not to show up, and basically pinned it all on Heather and Hannah. That was…odd. If you didn’t want her on the show, when she showed up, you would’ve told her to leave. So ridiculous.
And then Rachel did a 13 minute interview with Chris where all they talked about was the Rachael social media scandal. I want all of you to take the time to watch this.
I’m sorry, but that’s flat out embarrassing. Chris Harrison, the spokesperson for this show, cannot and refuses to call out racism when he sees it. Dude should seriously be fired for that stance. I mean, it’s laughable. The answers he gives are EXACTLY everything that Ashley and I talked about last night about WHY this is wrong. Chris might as well have just responded to my tweet with “hey, it was a just a party and they were dressed in costumes. Big deal.” Well actually, that’s pretty much what he DID say. Unreal. Lets see how many podcasts in Bachelor Nation call Chris out for this interview.
And here’s the other thing: Chris stepped in it again by saying that the show shouldn’t comment on it before Rachael does. However, what he’s not letting them know is Rachael HAS wanted to speak out about it for weeks, but the show has not allowed it. It was all covered in the live. It wasn’t until the Old South formal pics were posted on Thursday did the show tell Rachael she should make a statement. The hypocrisy going on behind the scenes is ridiculous and needs to be called out.
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