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On Tuesday evening, The bachelorette delivered a real twist: The long-running and traditionally ultra-white ABC show has gone straight about the race.
During an alternately sweet and intense one-on-one date, Bachelorette Tayshia Adams and candidate Ivan Hall discussed police brutality, Orange County white homogeneity, and Black Lives Matter protests. that have emerged since the murder of George Floyd by the police. Given the show’s traditional dedication to remaining as apolitical as possible, Tuesday’s raw conversation was a sharp start – and welcome to it.
Ivan wrote and performed a charming serenade to save his time alone with Tayshia – bringing it on stage as a winning personal touch. Thanks to COVID, this season’s romantic outings are a bit limited – so the couple shared an intimate night in Tayshia’s suite, playing Floor is Lava and ordering a massive bowl of ice cream. (No seriously. LARGE!)
Honestly? I would take this on a helicopter any day.
But soon enough, things got serious: As the two discussed their families, Ivan mentioned his younger brother, who spent four years in prison after being a victim of drug addiction. “My brother went through very dark times in prison,” said Ivan. “I was the only person he really opened up to what was going on behind it. This is crazy stuff.
George Floyd’s death, said Ivan, “really struck me. You can only imagine how wilder it could be in prison, right? And my brother used to tell me stories about how these officers literally beat him.
“I felt so bad,” Ivan continued, “because my first question was, ‘Well, Gabe, what have you done? But it doesn’t matter. For example, no matter what George Floyd did back and forth, or what my brother did, these people have a job to do and they have to do it right. They can’t hurt people for no reason, you know? So that made me check it out myself.
When Ivan asked Tayshia how the events of this year had affected her personally, she became calm and in tears. “I don’t know,” said the Bachelorette. “Just like everyone else is right now, that’s a lot. And it’s just overwhelming, and sometimes I feel like it affects me more than… ”
“… You even know it sometimes”, said Ivan, finishing his sentence.
After some encouragement from her date, Tayshia was able to share a little more what she was thinking – especially her upbringing in Orange County, where she was “surrounded by a lot of people who are not like me.”
“Being the only person who looks like me, I realize that I’ve been trying my whole life to blend in,” Tayshia said. “Because I knew I was different, you know?”
“Being the only person who looks like me, I realize that I have tried so hard all my life to blend in. Because I knew I was different, you know?“
Hearing people singing “Black Lives Matter,” Tayshia said, hit her harder than she initially expected or realized. “These are the people in my backyard that I’ve been trying to prove for so long that I’m the same as them,” she says. Ivan told him that during his college days, he got used to being called the “N word” at random as he walked by his campus.
“I never thought in my life that so many people would come together for a common cause,” Tayshia said of Black Lives Matter. “It was so beautiful.”
Adams, the second star this season after Clare Crawley’s abrupt exit, is the Bachelor second Black Bachelorette in the franchise. Rachel Lindsay went on to premiere in 2017 – though it’s interesting that the show’s attempts to combat race were clumsy at best and exploitative at worst. Next year Matt James will become the franchise’s first Black Bachelor. Hopefully, as the franchise diversifies, it will continue to make room for these important conversations.
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