Rachel Lindsay turns off Instagram amid bachelor party backlash

Rachel Lindsay – who as the first black woman to hold the position of incumbent Bachelorette, has frequently found herself in the position to criticize, publicize and highlight the franchise’s multiple race issues – has now turned her Instagram account off, after show “fans” turned toxic and abusive towards it. This, following the controversy currently surrounding the controversial reality show, as longtime host Chris Harrison announced that he was “taking aside“ of the show for a while following an interview with Lindsay in which he went far on the defensive on behalf of a contestant who was pictured participate in a “Plantation Party” invoking the tropes and aesthetics of the slave-owner Antebellum South.

In his role as Additional correspondent, Lindsay walked, with confidence, a incredibly complex tightrope in this interview, a that Black of women are often required to perform –simultaneously emerging as a well-deserved moral voice outrage, a cool and objective assessor of the issues presented, and a warm and sympathetic TV presence. (Harrison, meanwhile, spoke of the “police awake” and tried to stress that no one knew not to dress like a slave owner in 2018.) All of this to him apparently earned, for its problem, the disheartening but not unexpected tide of web abuse that followed.

By VarietyLindsay’s departure from social media was announced by her podcast co-host Van Lathan, who noted on his own social networks that his friend “DIdentify him because that’s what hate he comes from Bachelor fans, who spam her with all kinds of rude and hateful things to say. (He also took a few pictures at Harrison, overtaking him “a 49-year-old man who cannot read the play in these current times of 2021. ”)

Rachael Kirkconnell, the Bachelor candidate whose photographs began this latest iteration of Bachelor: Still has issues with race, eh?, has since joins many other voices in the franchise, asking fans not to attack Lindsay for her reasonable questioning of the two Kirkconnells his own actions and Harrison’s statements.

It’s not yet clear when, if at all, Harrison is expected to return to the franchise.