Our accountability culture demands public apology, but I see no pathways to forgiveness, no doorways to mercy.
On the first episode of this season of The Bachelor, Matt James, who was the franchise’s first Black bachelor in its 25-year run, did something you don’t often see on reality TV: He invited the contestants to pray with him. “Dear Heavenly Father… give these women the courage to get through these next few months,” he said. One contestant was especially moved: Rachael Kirkconnell, who would ultimately get Matt’s final rose, told Matt’s mother in the season finale that this prayer helped to confirm her belief that God had brought her to the show for a reason—to fall in love with Matt. Unbeknownst to Rachael at the time of filming, photos had resurfaced online of her at an antebellum-themed party in college three years ago. Viewers of The Bachelor experienced the season in a surreal split screen, with Rachael winning Matt’s heart on TV while the online outrage factory upended Rachael’s life offscreen. I thought about Matt’s prayer last night, as Emmanuel Acho, hosting the “After the Final Rose” ceremony, guided Rachael through a ritualistic confession of racial ignorance and insensitivity over the photos. “How often did you lay awake at night, worried that these photos might come out and ruin your life?” Emmanuel asked her. “I didn’t think about it one time,” Rachael answered honestly, so completely unaware was she of what attending such a party signified. It’s hard to decide what’s worse: lying awake at night obsessing over every single thing you’ve ever said or done that a stranger could leverage to “ruin your life”—or sleeping soundly, unaware of the mistake that will be your future downfall. Rachael, of course, is not alone; every day, a fresh public figure is fed to us for judgment and punishment. Just a week ago, the new editor of Teen Vogue, Alexi McCammond, a 27-year-old Black woman, was publicly scrutinized for tweets she wrote in college that negatively stereotyped Asian s—tweets she had already apologized for.
