‘The Bachelor’s’ crisis over race runs deeper than its creator

Michelle Young’s love story on her season of “The Bachelorette” did not end in happily-ever-after. She become more upset with the franchise’s failure to address the revelation, during the 2022 season of “The Bachelorette,” that contestant Erich Schwer had posed in blackface for his high school yearbook. Whatever Fleiss’ precise impact on the franchise’s problems with race, he leaves as the upcoming season of “The Bachelorette,” starring its fourth Black lead, Charity Lawson, faces a familiar set of daunting challenges. Adding that she thought the topic would be confronted during the episode, she said, “It wasn’t, and that’s not OK.” Young said on “2 Black Girls, 1 Rose” that when the controversy over Blitzer’s tweet erupted this season, she ordered producers to deal with Blitzer on air, or she would step away: “It was nonnegotiable.” Charity Lawson. During the late-season “Women Tell All” episode, which reunited contestants who had been rejected by Bachelor Zach Shallcross, Palmer himself alluded to the franchise’s troubled history in raising the subject of Blitzer’s tweets.