Love Is Blind Season 8 Is the Whitest It’s Ever Been

Spoilers for Episodes 1-6 ahead. I’ve seen every season of Love Is Blind and I’ll be the first to say that the Netflix reality series deserves most of its criticism. The show’s premise is kind of ehh, the people are usually more interested in clout than marriage, and there’s too much focus on drama than romance. But over the years, the series, which has singles get engaged sight unseen and follows their journey to the altar, has earned some points for its commitment to diversity, whether it’s race, ethnicity, sexuality, or religion. So, pray tell, what the eff happened to all the non-white people in Season 8 of Love Is Blind? 

The first batch of episodes have officially dropped and let me tell you, it’s a doozy. There are love triangles on top of love triangles, men with the reddest of red flags, and loads of trauma dumping. It’s all pretty routine — except there are very few people of color on screen. This season is set in Minneapolis and while the Upper Midwestern city is not as diverse as Chicago (Season 2), DC (Season 7), or Atlanta (Season 1 and a future upcoming season), it’s not the whitest either. (That honorific goes to Knoxville, Tennessee.) The Twin Cities population is 18% Black, 5% Asian, and 5% multiracial. 

And I know the Netflix execs found people of color because the cast photos dropped nearly two weeks ago and a handful of non-white singles were featured. But Episodes 1-6, which covers the entire pod dating stage, has most of them regulated to background characters or emotional support friends for all the white singles with major storylines. 

The three (yes, three!!) people of color with any serious screen time were, you guessed it, caught in a love triangle, although saying they “had” screen time is really an exaggeration because I can count the number of times they popped up on one hand. Not only that, but the conversations shown were very surface-level. The only in-depth feature we get is Devin Buckley sharing how he had to give up his dreams of playing pro ball because of an undiagnosed illness and Brittany Dodson revealing she’s bisexual. We never get anything from Virginia Miller. 

These are vulnerable moments for sure, but I wished we could’ve gone deeper, especially since viewers are resigned to hours of footage following four singles — Mason Horacek, Alex Brown, Madison Errichiello, and Meg Fink — who never even made it past the pods. 

If you think it couldn’t get any worse, it does. Because not only do viewers suffer through the whitest cast ever, but also one of its most politically ignorant. Love Is Blind has never shied away from tough conversations on divisive topics like abortion, religion, or infidelity. So, oncology nurse Sara Carton, who became politically active because of her sister’s sexuality and the murder of George Floyd, questioning potential partner Ben Mezzenga on his political views wasn’t anything jaw-dropping. But how insensitive and privileged his response was. 

Mezzenga tells Carton he is “ignorant” of political stuff and didn’t vote in the 2020 election. “As long as I don’t know, it’s not going to do much,” he says. Mezzenga is a white man and white men will never not have audacity, but really? Our current president is overturning our government into an oligarchy, women and femmes are seeing their body autonomy stripped away, and there’s a culture war against trans and LGBTQ+ people. But you rather bury your hand in the sand while the whole world goes up in flames around you. Oh, okay. 

Maybe I could wrap my mind around Mezzenga being politically ignorant, but he couldn’t even say he believed in the Black Lives Matter movement. “I’m not one way or another,” he admits. “I just keep out of it.” Keep out of what? Black people’s right to exist? Most white people in Carton’s position would tackle Mezzenga’s apathy with an awkward laugh or a subtle change in conversation. Instead, she gently tries to teach him that being white means using your privilege for good.

“It is so easy for us [white people] to not have an opinion,“ she explains. It’s a rare case where white person teaches their own about how to not be racist instead of leaving that emotional labor to the POCs. And I admire Carton’s tenacity and willingness to not only do the right thing in correcting Mezzenga but say the right thing on a platform like a Netflix dating show that isn’t designed for strong political statements. 

But she still gets engaged to Mezzenga in the end, albeit with his promise to educate himself on social justice. I just know that if Carton was anything but white, this wouldn’t be a happy ending. ‘Cause for Black people and other people of color, we can’t lay alongside the oppressor and chit-chat and hee-haw while they’re passively cosigning all the racist BS being thrown our way. 

I just find it so baffling that Season 8 isn’t only super white, but also so politically missing the mark on the current times. Granted this was filmed a year ago, but today’s headlines have been brewing for a while. We knew diversity, equity, and inclusion was under attack, Trump 2.0 was likely going to happen, and Project 2025 was already in motion. Nearly five years ago, George Floyd’s murder while in police custody and subsequent BLM protests made Minneapolis the epicenter for social change, but there’s nothing to show for it in the show. Nothing except a white man who willingly admits being apathetic to Black people’s lives and two other white folks who joke around about politics being too serious and divisive. 

And sure, I’m not expecting a reality show to discuss race and political ideology like a college lecture, but c’mon. It’s already bad enough the world is trying to erase my identity and gaslight me into thinking it’s not. I don’t need any more reminders of how many people Just. Don’t. Care. 

Watching Love Is Blind Season 8 shows just how far back we’re going. Not just in representation, but also in mindset. And sure, some may call me dramatic and write this off as just a silly reality TV show about finding love sight unseen. But I disagree. Because every day, I wake up to a new headline about another human right stripped away, another anti-DEI law passed, another reminder that racialized and marginalized groups don’t belong in Trump’s America. So when I turn on my TV to escape the traumas of reality, I don’t want to see another reminder of my supposed insignificance. 

New episodes of Love Is Blind Season 8 debut Fridays on Netflix.