‘The Bachelor’ Contestant Greer Blitzer Apologizes for Defending Blackface
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The Bachelor had its Season 27 premiere on Monday, January 23, and of course, controversy quickly followed.
The First Impression Rose was handed out by Bachelor Zach Shallcross to contestant Greer Blitzer, a 24-year-old medical sales rep based in New York City. But the drama for Blitzer began long before the show went to air, way back in September 2022.
At the time, a Reddit user shared screengrabs of the soon-to-be-contestant’s now-deleted tweets from 2016, in which she defended a friend who dressed in blackface to go as Tupac for Halloween. One of her comments read, “Putting white powder on your face isn’t okay either. That didn’t make the news did it?”
Attention on the Reddit post and her past comments grew following the reality show premiere, so Blitzer chose to address her stance in her Instagram Stories, writing the following:
“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, I used misguided arguments on Twitter to defend a student who dressed in Blackface as Tupac for Halloween. 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 these harmful opinions at all. Time and age do not excuse my actions, but this is not a reflection of who I am today.”
This is far from the first time The Bachelor has suffered from racism issues. There was no black Bachelorette in the franchise until 2017, and Chris Harrison lost his role as the long-running series host after defending a contestant whose photos attending an antebellum-South themed party went viral.
It remains to be seen just how far Blitzer will make it in Season 27.
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