‘Bachelor’ contestant Greer Blitzer apologizes for defending blackface, “I’m just so ashamed”

Another contestant from The Bachelor franchise was in the hot seat for posting racially insensitive remarks on social media. Tuesday’s installment of The Bachelor: The Women Tell All featured contestant Greer Blitzer apologizing for some tweets from 2016 in which she defended someone wearing blackface.

Blitzer deleted the posts ahead of the show’s premiere in January, but not before users grabbed screenshots of them, which they posted on Reddit. Greer apologized for the tweets on her own social media at the time, but the show had not addressed the controversy until now.

“I’ve been wanting to address this. I don’t want to sweep it under the rug,” Blitzer told host Jesse Palmer. “What happened was racist. It’s not about the intent; it’s about the impact.”

“This acquaintance of mine that I knew performing blackface was racist, me defending it was racist, my ignorance was racist and I’m just so ashamed.”

Blitzer went on to say she sought the help of Dr. Kira Banks, a professor and diversity, equity and inclusion consultant, explaining, “I really wanted to dive deep into the history of blackface and understand why it was wrong, why it was offensive. The research that I was able to do, I realized it was symbolism for dehumanizing the Black community.”

Blitzer allegedly tweeted in 2016 that the students involved “didn’t even know what blackface was so my point exactly. It wasn’t an intentional racist act.” Another allegedly read, “This previous incident was dumb not racist? She did not paint herself black because she felt superior to black ppl.” A final post read, “Putting white powder on your face isn’t okay either. That didn’t make the news did it?”

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