Rachel Lindsay is not holding back in her upcoming book and she’s already dropping some telling excerpts so fans can get a glimpse of the “hard truths” she’ll be revealing.
In her book Miss Me With That: Hot Takes, Helpful Tidbits, and a Few Hard Truths, Rachel Lindsay plans to continue her pattern of being candid about her experiences and important issues, including race and mental health.
As the first Black lead in The Bachelor franchise’s history, Rachel has faced plenty of uphill battles and has used her platform to push the franchise and its fanbase to be more progressive and do better when it comes to representing people of color.
In the excerpts Rachel has teased thus far, she continues to shed light on ignorant and insensitive comments she’s received, the issues of Black women stereotypes, as well as white discomfort and fragility.
Rachel Lindsay on stereotyping Black women
In one of Rachel’s posts, she shared an excerpt from her book where she discusses the way people stereotype Black women and reduce who they are by making them one-dimensional.
Rachel’s quote read, “I am not just a strong Black woman…I’m a real human being with strengths and vulnerabilities, hopes and fears, standards and contradictions.”
She was referencing society’s often deliberate effort to paint Black women in a negative light by reducing them to racist stereotypes. One stereotype Black women are all too familiar with is being told they are “strong” because often people think it’s a compliment.
However, all too often, Black women are only seen and acknowledged for their strength and ability to endure, thus not giving them the space to be human and have fears and emotions and multiple facets to their character.
Rachel’s quote aims to serve as a reminder that Black women are multidimensional, they have strengths, they also have vulnerabilities that shouldn’t make them any less loved and valuable.
Rachel Lindsay captioned the post, saying, “Black women are the blueprint, period. We are allowed to be whoever we decide to be unapologetically. And above all else, we don’t have to fit the narrative society places on us.”
Rachel Lindsay on a white male executive’s ignorance
The entertainment industry is particularly notorious when it comes to painting Black women as caricatures and reducing them to just characters. Rachel addressed this by sharing a time when “a white male executive producer told me he ‘personally identified as a Black woman.’”
Rachel highlights this ignorant comment because it further illustrates how people can view Black women as caricatures and figurative ‘costumes’ to put on rather than viewing them as multifaceted human beings.
Rachel’s caption on the post emphasized this, saying, “You can’t put on and take off the experience of being a Black woman like it’s a new coat. Unless you ARE, you’re not. Period.”
Rachel Lindsay on fragility and white discomfort
In another one of Rachel’s posts, she addressed fragility and white discomfort, where white people get uncomfortable and become defensive when talking about racism in a way that actually helps perpetuate it.
Rachel wrote, “Comfort comes after the change…think about what you’re asking of me when you complain about the discomfort that lack of representation in The Bachelor franchise creates for people of color.”
Rachel continued, “Ask yourself just how concerned with white discomfort was the Black historical figure you post on Instagram every February. If Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, or Nelson Mandela – insert your fave here – had yielded to the white frailty of their time. If we applied that same thinking in every situation, where would our society be?”
Miss Me With That: Hot Takes, Helpful Tidbits, and a Few Hard Truths, Rachel Lindsay is set to be released on January 25. The Bachelorette is currently on hiatus on ABC.