We all know what typically happens when a celebrity is caught saying the n-word: they give us a half-assed, perfunctory apology most likely written by their publicist. And that’s exactly what The Bachelorette star Hannah Brown did a few weeks ago after she sang along to DaBaby’s “Rockstar” on Instagram Live.
But it seems that Brown has had a change of heart amidst all the racial unrest and decided to take to Instagram to give an 18-minute, heartfelt apology.
In a video titled “from my heart, I’m sorry,” Brown reflected on what she’d done and said,
“What I did, I didn’t want it to go away. What I did was something extremely serious and I did not want to continue repeating this long history of white people not taking accountability and responsibility for their actions when people of color, black people, call them out on their behavior. That is something I do not want to be a part of. To do that, I had to understand.”
The Dancing with the Stars winner added that she is currently focusing on educating herself and even recruited an educator to “help me understand the things that I’ve never even have been taught, learned or been a part of my education like ever before.”
Brown pledged to be a part of the solution and promised her followers that she would learn and grow from this incident, apologizing for the hurt and disappointment she caused.
She added,
“If you want to support me, do not defend me. What I did, what I said was indefensible. I don’t need anybody to defend me for what I did because what I said, what I did was wrong. But I’m hoping that what I did was wrong but what I didn’t know even before is the worst part of it, and it’s the ignorance. I’m no longer ignorant and I’m no longer going to be part of the problem.”
It’s worth giving Brown credit for even coming forward with a substantive apology other than the typical, “I’m sorry you were offended.” While she appeared to low-key blame her intoxication for the incident, Brown is taking ownership of what she did, and at the very least giving good lip service over the offense.
The part about getting an educator was a bit odd since she knew that using the n-word was wrong, so … what is there to learn? Perhaps she wants to better understand the Black struggle and how her place in society makes her blind to it. Maybe she wants to inform herself about the persistent pain that sears through so many Black families for multiple generations, and the systematic racism that has imprisoned them in a new kind of modern-day slavery. One can only hope.
At the end of the day, only Brown knows if she is truly being sincere. Hopefully, her words not only come from a place of shame, but also a hunger for knowledge — knowledge of what her privilege has shielded from her for so long.
READ THIS NEXT
‘The Bachelorette’ Hannah Brown May Not Deserve To Be Cancelled But She Needs To Be Held Accountable
