This week, we go back to where it all started – for this podcast that is. Kaitlyn’s season was the first one that Here to Make Friends recapped, all the way back in 2015.

By then, The Bachelor was more consistently casting people of color on the show – but they didn’t often get far or have very positive portrayals on the show. Of Kaitlyn’s contestants of color, only Ian Thomson – who had a very rough exit – got any real screen time during Monday’s recap. Once again, the supercut approach made the show even whiter.

But Ian wasn’t the only Black man to have a very unflattering storyline on the show. Kupah James left at the beginning of episode four, after a painful conversation with Kaitlyn about their lack of connection and a dramatic exit interview. Jonathan Holloway, a soft-spoken single dad, made it a bit further despite being #TeamBritt. To find out more about that messy exit and what it was like in Kaitlyn’s Bachelorette mansion, we talked to Kupah and Jonathan about their time on the show.

It may seem like the protests are simmering down, or at least like they’re out of the news cycle or your Twitter feed. But people are still in the streets, fighting for a better world, and it’s incumbent on us to stay tuned in and to keep doing what we can. As promised, we are going to give our community calls to action each week:

(1) The Okra Project – “The Okra Project is a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People wherever we can reach them.”

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