Last night Beyond Black & White had it’s semi-weekly live Bachelorette watch party, and your humble host had some…concerns. I’m really worried that some of us may be invested in this show, and it may be a complete and utter put on. While I think Rachel is genuinely looking for love, me thinks the producers are working behind the scenes to pull her puppet strings.

For one–or two–there’s Lee and Iggy. These men consistently get roses despite how utterly obvious it is that neither men (and I use that word loosely) are interested in Rachel romantically. These two men exist solely to create girly-style drama and instill gossip and doubt. This is a classic producer play for ratings and it’s clear to anyone with eyes (and even a few very sensitive blind people) thats Rachel cares for neither of them.

Then there was the triteness of the black guys like Kenny and Josiah dancing and rapping, you know, because black chicks like that stuff. However, while we haven’t seen a lot of organic chemistry between Rachel and any of the black guys, don’t rule them out. The episode reveals our heroine in a vulnerable state of tears as she tells the producers of the pressures she feels as a black woman making a romantic choice that can and will be seen as a political choice for many. For a moment, we saw in Rachel what we’ve known and talked about for nearly a decade–there are major social consequence about black women’s choices of romantic partners if they aren’t black males, especially is the woman is successful. There is an expectation that #blacklove should be enforced whenever the opportunity arises, but that responsibility seems to only apply to black women. Why? Because statistically, educated black men marry interracially at 30%, if they marry at all.

The highlight of the show was her date with Dean, who is hot and sexy in an awkward, high school kind of way. Rachel’s time with Peter was much more soulful, and the comfort and compatibility between them was so obvious. He’s comfortable in his own skin, respects and admires Rachel, and appears to be at a time in his life where he’s ready to make a commitment.

But we’ll see. As I mentioned, this could all be a big, fat, lie.

https://youtu.be/FqKiMzJxhqE

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