‘Bachelor’ Frontrunner Greer’s Blackface Controversy Explained

The first episode of The Bachelor has just premiered and yet we already have our first controversy — one that just so happens to involve a frontrunner…

While the first impression rose is always coveted, it’s rarely a good thing to get it because it automatically puts a target on your back. And we’re not just talking about from the other women, we’re talking the internet sleuths as well. They will uncover everything, and they did just that with Greer Blitzer.

We all watched as Greer received Zach’s first impression rose in Season 27 premiere. The episode had barely finished when The U.S. Sun reported about old tweets from Greer defending a person in Blackface. Yikes.

Here’s all the drama broken down.

Back in 2016, a student at Lamar High School in Houston, Texas — the high school that Greer attended — got in trouble for showing up to a Halloween party in Blackface while dressed as Tupac. Greer took to Twitter to defend the person in now-deleted tweets, calling what happened dumb but not racist and saying that, “She did not paint herself black because she felt superior to black ppl.”

Another tweet reads, “The students involved didn’t even know what blackface was… it wasn’t an intentional racist act.”

In response to the tweets being revealed, Greer posted an apology to her Instagram story, writing:

“The journey to love is filled with lessons and these lessons are also made on our journey of growth. In my past, I have made some uneducated, ignorant and frankly wrong, comments on my social media accounts. In particular, in 2016, I used misguided arguments on Twitter to defend a student who dressed in Blackface as Tupac for Halloween.”

Greer’s apology continued:

“I am deeply sorry to those I have hurt, especially those within the Black community, not because these screenshots have resurfaced but because I ever shared those harmful opinions at all. Time and age do not excuse my actions, but this is not a reflection of who I am today. I do not stand by or condone the damaging opinions and behaviors I shared during that stage of my life and will forever regret making those offensive remarks.”

This information is too easy to find that it’s hard to believe ABC didn’t know about this — especially since similar issues have happened before with former contestants (see Rachael Kirkconnell for reference). It’s almost as if the powers that be over at ABC want this information to come out, and if it comes out on the show, all the better for the drama. After all, all publicity is good publicity.

Make sure to watch The Bachelor every Monday night at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.