Race Representation & Reality TV

Boy bands. Gossip magazines. Karaoke. The breadsticks at Olive Garden.

You might be asking yourself what all of those have in common, and the answer is nothing. I’m just listing a whole bunch of common guilty pleasures in order to make my own seem less embarrassing.

Every Monday night, my sister and I stop whatever we’re doing at 8 p.m. and turn on the TV in our living room, flipping the channel straight to ABC. It’s a tradition we lovingly refer to as “Bachelor Monday,” because nothing can really kick-start your week like watching 20 women cry over the woes that come with dating the same man. (I say this very cynically, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t emotionally invested in the show. And I’m not alone, okay? Because every episode draws over a million viewers.)

There is a slew of problems associated with The Bachelor, including sexism, exploitation, and mental/emotional abuse of the contestants. But the one problem that seems to draw the most attention is the lack of racial and ethnic representation on the show.

Each season, 25 people (all men or all women, depending on the season) congregate in the same place to compete for the Bachelor/Bachelorette’s heart. Producers and cast members alike deny that the show is of any sort of competitive nature, but watching an episode for ten minutes will prove otherwise. In the past, women have manipulated each other in order to stand out, and men have literally fought each other over “alone time.” At the beginning of every season, roughly 5 out of the 25 cast members are minorities. This website explains pretty well how few people of color have been cast on The Bachelor/Bachelorette, including charts depicting how far into the season they lasted. It is a running joke between them on the show that they are the “token black guy” or “token Hispanic girl.” They laugh it off, the producers laugh it off, America laughs it off.

But why are we laughing? Most people have attributed the lack of minority representation to the idea that the depiction of interracial relationships on TV would make people uncomfortable. What does that say about us as a country? We’re totally okay with this white guy kissing 18 women in one day, as long as none of them are black?

The first minority lead of the show came in 2014 (after 18 seasons of hella white people). Juan Pablo Galavis, a Venezuelan soccer player, was cast as The Bachelor. Having not stood out at all the previous season, his appointment came as something of a shock… but he was cast after several weeks of female-dominated fan hype about his good looks. And (surprise, surprise) Juan Pablo is extremely white-passing. His thick Venezuelan accent is the only thing that outwardly identifies him as a minority.

In 2012 a lawsuit was brought against the producers of The Bachelor for “purposeful segregation in the media that perpetuates racial stereotypes and denies persons of color of opportunities in the entertainment industry.” The case was dismissed by a judge on the premise that the producers’ casting choices are protected by the First Amendment. However, since the lawsuit, minority presence on the show has significantly spiked. There has been speculation that producers have to fill a quota of minority cast members, and that the show’s lead is required to keep them around for a certain amount of time. So again, what does that say about us as a country that we have that much of a problem with realistic racial/ethnic representation in the media? The Bachelor is far from realistic anyway, but interracial relationships are so commonplace these days that it amazes me that people have such negative feelings towards them.

The whole Bachelor thing is honestly pretty fucked up, and I’ll be the first to admit that. But right now I have to go because it’s hometown dates week and I am so not gonna miss that.