The Bachelor Started With White Tears & Ended With White Tears

“Well, if you all want to share one final embrace?” It was with those words during The Bachelor’s 2021 “After the Final Rose” special that I was left screaming like a pitchy tea kettle alone in my apartment. The interview-ending request is said by Emmanuel Acho, the athlete-turned-author who was tapped to host season 25’s  “After the Final Rose” following Chris Harrison’s lengthy and confusing defense of racist behavior in February. Bachelor Matt James, the first Black Bachelor, and his “winner” Rachael Kirkconnell, the contestant who started Bachelor Nation’s racism reckoning when photos of her attending a slavery-era themed party were found, were on the receiving end of Emmanuel’s urging. By this point in “After the Final Rose,” everyone knows Matt and Rachael have broken up. 

Rachael, already tear-stained from an “emotional” conversation about the damage of her actions, looks hopeful. Matt, like many viewers, is visibly hurt by the mere suggestion that he should hug the woman who broke his heart and made a mockery — whether on purpose or not — of the centuries-long systemic and brutal abuse of people who look like him; people who look like the children he and Rachael may have raised if they had wed, as was previously in the cards. 

“After the Final Rose” had a chance to be a significant learning moment for white viewers watching these last few weeks of controversy unfold. As Rachael says herself during the special, she received “a lot” of messages from fans saying her antebellum “party” past is “normal” where they grew up. Rather than allow Rachael (and viewers like her) to process the full extent of her harm and grow from it, Emmanuel and The Bachelor rush to make Rachael out to be a tragic figure at the mercy of “cancel culture,” a new foreboding-sounding euphemism for “consequences.” After a season of kowtowing to white tears above all else, the finale made the same mistake once last time. 

It’s important to note that Rachael doesn’t actually demand to be painted as a victim during “After the Final Rose.” She apologized for her social media weeks ago. During “After the Final Rose,” Rachael admits she was “ignorant” for going to an “Old South Day''-themed party. She says, “I’m not going to sit here and say, ‘I didn’t know any better’ … I could have easily understood what was wrong with it.” Rachael tells viewers that even if the glorification of slavery is “common” in their hometowns, “that doesn’t make it right.” 

It’s Emmanuel, with the support of Bachelor producers, who creates a framework to help excuse Rachael in response to her palpable sadness. Before Emmanuel even speaks to Rachael on-camera, he puts the pressure on Matt to explain why he would ever break up with Rachael “for an action from three years ago” if he ever “really” loved her. Then Emmanuel asks Matt, “Couldn’t you teach [Rachael]? Couldn’t you grow with her? If you were judged based off of something of three years ago … I think that could, to a degree, be callous.” This is a near exact mimicry of the willfully obtuse (and tacitly racist) Chris Harrison defense that forced the longtime Bachelor host to “step aside” from filming duties in the first place. 

Then, once Rachael joins Emmanuel on stage, The Bachelor turns itself into even tighter knots to protect her. “There’s a difference between being racist and racially insensitive or racially ignorant,” Emmanuel tells Rachael, as she nods. He then explains that someone can behave in a “racially ignorant” manner that “plays out” as racism, but that person may not be “racist.” It’s a baffling series of semantic manipulation that does not help anyone. Rather, it’s extremely easy to imagine a white viewer using Emmanuel’s words to defend their harmful behavior against a real-life Black person in the near future — “I was being insensitive, not racist. The guy from The Bachelor said so.”

The final section of Matt and Rachael’s time on The Bachelor cements the season’s inability to grasp the gravity of what has happened. In this part of “After the Final Rose,” the exes are forced to talk through their break up. “Rachael, how would you communicate to Matt that the woman he fell in love with — not the woman from 2018 … is the woman sitting in front of him?,” Emmanuel asks. This problem is, the Rachael of 2021 is the same woman from 2018. She may have read some more books about race relations in America or listened to a few podcasts, but she is not a different person. Rachael doesn't deserve death threats and violence, but a few weeks of self-education also doesn't entitle her to the love and time of a “devastated” Black person, as Matt described himself. 

This fact is especially true since Rachael admits she didn’t consider the “trauma” of her party — or her June 2020 decision to post culturally appropriative photos — in connection to her relationship with a Black man until the controversy began. The Rachael of 2021 did not think there was a problem until an entire fandom told her there was a problem. Still Rachael cries about her feelings of loss over the breakup. In response, Emmanuel needles Matt over the possibility of a “relationship reconciliation” with his weepy ex. Matt is asked this despite multiple assertions that he cannot be with Rachael as she “does the work.” The Bachelor machine cannot help by try to soothe a crying white woman, no matter her contributions to a toxic situation.

We have seen this issue play out countless times over The Bachelor season 25. The series (and Matt) allowed Sarah Trott’s tears to ruin a group date and hone in on the romance of Serena Pitt’s first one-on-one. Serena is a biracial woman of color whose mother is Indian-Canadian. The manipulation of Victoria Larson’s tears sent Marylynn Sienna home and eventually wrecked an entire cocktail party. Those same tears worked very hard to serve as a smokescreen for Victoria’s decision to call Ryan Claytor, a Black woman, a “ho.” When Victoria confronted Matt at the 2021 “Women Tell All” for rightly saying she should “self reflect” that he “had no words for her,” Matt apologized to Victoria. Similarly, when Anna Redman was put in the “WTA” hot seat for starting a baseless rumor that fellow contestant Brittany Galvin is a sex worker, Matt comforted Anna. He told Anna his “heart went out to [her]” while watching footage of her elimination and that he knew those actions “weren’t Anna’s character.”

At that moment, those decisions were Anna’s character — in much the same way that the Rachael Kirkconnell “of 2018” continues to live in the Rachael Kirkconnell of 2021. Still, The Bachelor wants Matt James to give her a hug to make the guilt of that indelible truth go away. At least he said no.