A couple of weeks ago, Hannah Brown messed up.
Big time.
She was drunk on Instagram Live and decided to sing a bit of DaBaby’s “Rockstar,” a song that’s very big on TikTok right now.
And while singing the song, she sang the N-word.
With a hard “R” and everything.
The backlash came quick, because of course it did, and at first, Hannah denied saying the word.
She said that she was sure she skipped over it in the song because she never says that word, and maybe someone else said it, but certainly not her.
But if you saw the video, it was undeniable — she definitely said it, although she did skip over “f-ck,” which seems like a super questionable choice.
Like one of those words is 100% worse than the other, and it’s not the one she censored herself from saying.
When the video was over and she sobered up a bit, she realized that this whole thing wasn’t going to blow over, and she posted a quick text apology on her Instagram story.
A lot of people didn’t think it came across as sincere, and many suspected it was just something a publicist wrote and sent over.
But whether Hannah wrote it herself or not, many Bachelor fans didn’t think it was enough.
If you’ve been keeping up with this story for the past two weeks, you know that it’s been wild.
Former contestants of the show like Rachel Lindsay, Nick Viall, and Bekah Martinez have all thrown in their two cents, with Rachel even trying to help Hannah do a proper apology.
And fans have been torn, with some cancelling Hannah and others defending her.
But tonight, Hannah herself has finally stepped forward to talk about everything in a lengthy video, again posted to Instagram.
So let’s take a look at that, all right?
At the beginning of the video, she’s visibly very nervous, which is fair, and she explains that she’s been silent for so long now because she was trying to wait for the right time to address things.
She says that right now, when “the death of George Floyd is happening and there’s so much suffering and anger I didn’t want to offend anybody.”
But after thinking about things, she “realized that it’s not about the right time, it’s about the right thing,” and that she needs to start taking accountability for things and using her platform for good.
Early on in the video, she admits that she does have some notes that she’ll be referring to, so it seems like she really is trying her best here.
After explaining what happened in that now-infamous video, she says that “I initially didn’t even know it was happening, because I know it is wrong to say the N-word in a song, and I couldn’t imagine I had used it, so I immediately denied it.”
“It is a word I always omit,” and she says that while she tried to defend herself, between being “intoxicated” and “embarrassed and confused,” she made the situation worse.
It wasn’t until the next morning that she fully realized what she had done, and she immediately felt ashamed and embarrassed, so she wrote her apology, which she maintains was fully her doing.
However, she never intended that to be the end of things — she wanted to gather her thoughts and really speak from the heart, which is why she took so much time away from the spotlight.
In her time off, she did a lot of prayer and a lot of journaling, and she came across a bible verse that read “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
“If I can say this word slipped out of my mouth, then what slipped into my heart?” she asked herself.
So she actually hired someone to help her learn about all of this, and she started reading books and listening to podcasts and watching videos of people talking about racism.
“I don’t want to be ignorant anymore,” she tells her followers. “I don’t want to be an ignorant white girl who uses the N-word.”
To her fans, she says “If you want to support me, do not defend me. Do not send hateful messages to people who are holding me accountable. If you want to support me, just continue to encourage me to do better.”
She adds that “I promise you, I will not be a part of the problem anymore from ignorance, I will be part of the solution.”
She apologizes once again, “from the bottom of my heart,” and promises to keep learning and to keep trying to do better and help others like her learn how to do better, too.
It’s an 18 minute long video, so obviously these are just a few of the high points, but it does sound like she really is taking accountability for what she did.
It’s also nice that she acknowledged that some people won’t forgive her, and that’s fine too.
What do you think about her apology?