Hannah Brown, 25, is again apologizing for her use of an inappropriate term. “I have some things and responsibilities that I need to take account for…I was on a run and I just can’t stay silent anymore,” she began her 18 minute Instagram video post shared on Saturday, May 30. The former Bachelorette star came under fire for singing the word “n—-” in an Instagram Live video while attempting to do a TikTok dance to DaBaby‘s “Rockstar.”
“I don’t think the right thing right now is to be silent. I hope that I’m not offending anybody. This is coming from the bottom of my heart, I sincerely don’t want to hurt anybody else. I want to be a part of the solution,” she continued, referencing the death of George Floyd. “Here is what I can do to be a part of the solution…two weeks ago while I was on an Instagram live I attempted to talk, sing a popular TikTok dance and I recited the ‘N’ word and it was a part of the song,” she explained.
Hannah brown owes us 'a major apology' and this is what it looks like🙄 such a shallow woman pic.twitter.com/yryty4291R
— Kate (@Kateaholics) May 18, 2020
After followers flooded her page with criticism, Hannah was quick to issue a written apology for her “unacceptable” behavior via Instagram story on May 17. “I tried to defend myself but between being intoxicated — which I’m also not proud of — and just being embarrassed and confused, I just made it a whole lot worse,” the Alabama native, who sported a pink corduroy LA Dodgers cap, said through tears. “I was embarrassed, I was disappointed and I just felt so much shame on me,” she continued.
“[My first] apology was from my heart and in my own words but it was never ever supposed to be the end of the conversation, it was just the beginning,” Hannah added. “But I knew if I wanted to be from my sincerest self and I had to put in some work and I had to go through a process and I think that’s why people are like, ‘Why now?’…the truth is I had a lot that I had to figure out and it is abnormal what I did. What I did, I don’t want it to go away,” she also said during the video.
After her initial May 17 apology, fellow Bachelorette alum Rachel Lindsay — who remains the series’ only black star — was critical of Hannah’s post. “It’s easy to make a statement. It’s easy to hide behind words, but when you’re bold enough to say the N-word on camera, on your platform… then you need be bold enough to use your face on camera and apologize in the same way you said the word,” the lawyer said in a video of her own. “I’m personally hurt and offended that I gave somebody the opportunity to do that, and it wasn’t done,” she added, noting that she had contacted Hannah directly about her choice of words.
Hours before her lengthy apology video, Hannah also shared an image to her Instagram feed of a quote from artist Ricardo Levin Morales. “White people are taught that racism is a personal attribute, an attitude, maybe a set of habits. Anti-racist whites invest too much energy worrying about getting it right; about not slipping up and revealing their racial socialization; about saying the right things and knowing when to say nothing,” the post read. “It’s not about that. It’s about putting your shoulder to the wheel of history; about undermining the structural supports of a system of control that grinds us under, that keeps us divided even against ourselves and that extracts wealth, power and life from our communities like an oil company sucks it from the earth.”