What Can We Learn About Race From The Bachelorette? | Psychology Today

I will be the first to admit that when I heard the long-running ABC franchise The Bachelor/Bachelorette was going to have their first black female bachelorette, I was intrigued. Though I generally have a no-reality-television policy—reality television to me is like junk food for the brain, and I try to avoid it at all costs—I decided that it could be interesting to tune into the show for social psychological purposes.

And so it began—my re-immersion into the franchise under the guise of “research”. Over all, I would say the way that race has been explored thus far this season has been rather disappointing—there have been very few explicit dialogues regarding race, particularly given that only one of her remaining suitors is black. So if you were looking for this season to offer some meaningful social commentary on race relations in America today—yeah, um, look elsewhere.

While race was clearly an undercurrent behind earlier feuds between the male suitors—witness the instigator Lee Garrett, a white suitor who has allegedly come under fire for racist tweets—appeared to exclusively target the black males in the house in an effort to undermine his competition. Moreover, in his instigations, he frequently cited the “aggressive” nature of various males in the house—again, all black—consistent with the implicit language used frequently against blacks that trigger stereotypes. Why he wasn’t confronted sooner by other males in the house or kicked out for his antics by Rachel before she finally saw the light—ahem, ratings, I imagine?—could be debated; the entire incident, as one writer remarked, appeared to reflect, “the franchise’s clumsy grip on how to tackle race” (Bradley, 2017, para 4).

Indeed, while there have been incidents which could have opened up a more meaningful dialogue about race on the show, it appears that the franchise is shying away from any meaningful exploration. As Bradley (2017) reflects, such opportunities, “usually come and go without comment from [Rachel] Lindsay or anyone else onscreen” (para 5).

This past episode, however, did delve a little deeper—to the extent that the word ‘deep’ could be used in the context of reality television— into an exploration of race when the aunt of Eric Bigger, the only remaining suitor who is black, asked Rachel how it felt to be the first black bachelorette. What ensued was a refreshingly candid discussion in which Rachel acknowledged that it was enormous pressure while at the same time reflecting that the quest for love is color blind.

Does any of this really matter? Is the attention to Rachel’s—and her suitors’—race much ado about nothing? I would argue, actually, that it is groundbreaking that a black bachelorette has finally been cast.

Firstly, that The Bachelor franchise flipped the usual script of having a gaggle of seemingly desperate single women competing for one attractive, desirable available male by trading off with a female as the lead is itself revolutionary. This spin-off from the original Bachelor happened presumably because of the popularity of the show, as the women selected are often rejects from the earlier season (as was Rachel Lindsay).

From the perspective of traditional gender norms, to flip the predictable script and have the woman be in control of her romantic life and choose between males who are competing for her attention is noteworthy itself (let’s just overlook for now the very traditional gendered ways the males have been competing this season for Rachel’s esteem, like the actual Viking sword fight that was one of the competitions the male suitors engaged in against one another while Rachel looked on from the sidelines).

Nonetheless, to see a female have agency over her dating life and to even be kissing multiple males on the same night in her “quest to find a husband” while somewhat jarring is contrary to stereotypical sexual mores where women are under pressure to be submissive and sexually chaste. To then add to this already flipped script by casting a black lead has the potential to be groundbreaking, even if so far the editing and way the franchise has been handling race has been relatively shallow.

For instance, researchers at the University of Southern California identified an “epidemic of invisibility” on television and films in Hollywood, documenting the dearth of representation on indices such as gender, race, ethnicity and sexual status (as reported by Deggans, 2016). Is it possible, in the near future, for instance, that a gay bachelor or bachelorette would be cast? In other words, Hollywood has diversity problems, and most of us didn’t need the hashtag OscarsSoWhite to recognize that. But for the science to actually back up what most consumers know to be true as they flip through their screens is important.

Some of the specific findings of this study revealed that on television and film, despite comprising half of the population, only about a third of speaking characters were female, and even less of a percentage (28.5%) of characters with dialogue were non-white (Deggans, 2016). Even more stunning findings:

Just 3.4 percent of film directors were female, and only 7 percent of films had a cast whose balance of race and ethnicity reflected the country's diversity. In broadcast TV, 17 percent of directors were female and 19 percent of programs were ethnically balanced. (Deggans, 2016, para 6)

To the extent that popular culture serves as a significant barometer for larger issues in our culture—I mean come to think of it, isn’t the guy in the oval office a former reality television star—representation in Hollywood matters. Who is telling stories, how the stories are being told, and how different groups are being portrayed—or in this case, not portrayed—significantly impacts the perceptions that viewers develop of the people around them.

So in a Hollywood environment where women of color over the age of 40 have been deemed “largely invisible” and where over one-fifth of black characters have no dialogue whatsoever (Deggans, 2016), Rachel Lindsay as this season’s bachelorette is a breath of fresh air. Sure, ABC may still be wading in shallow waters when it comes to its depiction of race thus far, but at least there is the potential on this season’s The Bachelorette for exploration into deeper terrain.

Copyright Azadeh Aalai 2017