Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Jewish ‘Bachelor’ Contestant Apologizes To Black ‘Bachelorette’ For Offensive Tweet

Leah Block, a Jewish contestant from ‘The Bachelor,’ tweeted an apology to Rachel Lindsay, the franchise’s first black bachelorette, for a tweet she posted during Monday’s episode.

Block tweeted, “I’m sitting here watching @BacheloretteABC and my roommate just sat down on the couch and said, What is this? @LoveAndHipHop_? DEAD.”

For those of you who can’t figure it out based on context clues, “Love And Hip Hop” is a reality television franchise that documents the lives of rap, R&B, and hip-hop producers, the great majority of whom are black. In other words, because Rachel Lindsay is black, she belongs (according to Block’s roommate) on “Love and Hip Hop.”

A hilarious joke, truly one for the ages.

Lindsay, who is not to be messed with under any circumstance, quickly tweeted a response to Block’s now deleted tweet.

Lindsay is referring to Lee Garrett, a contestant on her own season who made headlines for his extremely offensive Twitter account, replete with racially charged tweets of his own.

Block, acutely aware that she was out of her depth, issued a long apology on her Facebook page, vowing to be try harder in the future.

“I come forward honestly and openly, to extend my sincere apology for the tweet from my account on Monday, June 19th regarding the current season of The Bachelorette,” wrote Block.

“Our Society should have no place for hate that targets any minority group. We can’t make the future better until we make ourselves better. And I’m starting now.”

It’s nice to know that we live in an era where people are called out when they cross lines. This will hopefully serve as a lesson to Block — educate yourself or stop tweeting.

Becky Scott is the editor of The Schmooze. Follow her on Twitter at @arr_scott

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.