The Bachelorette alum Garrett Yrigoyen got into an Instagram argument with season 25 contestant Bekah Martinez after posting a black square with a blue line through it. Garrett has a long history of being tone deaf and ing derogatory remarks. On season 14 of The Bachelorette, where he was ultimately chosen by fiancée Becca Kufrin, old tweets and Instagram posts came back to haunt him. Garrett liked and reposted multiple posts that perpetuated hate and racism.
During his season, a slew of anti-trans, anti-immigrant circulated social media, along with posts ing Merica Supply co., a clothing company that makes fun of leftist-women and feminists by calling them fat. He also liked posts about the U.S. military throwing undocumented immigrant children over the border wall. These issues were lightly addressed by Becca Kufrin on After the Final Rose, but lacked any ability beyond that. Fast-forward to June 4, when the controversial star posted a black square with a blue line through it accompanied by a lengthy post defending “blue lives” and backing police in uniform.
With the current social climate of protests and for the Black Lives Matter movement, many were outraged by Garrett’s lackluster for the movement. The star posted a black square followed by a set of fist emojis as his first and only for Black Lives Matter, which is a stark contrast to his vehement for police. He captioned the “blue line” photo, “The Thin Blue Line represents each officer protecting protestors, properties, and businesses while being threatened, attacked, shot, shot at, hit with vehicles, and other forms of brutality.” He went on to state, “They are suffering the consequences over an act they didn’t commit. They continue to put in overtime away from their families, stay silent while being threatened, hated, and assaulted.”
Many spoke out against the tone-deaf statement, including Bachelor contestant Bekah Martinez, who responded saying, “uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh law enforcement CHOOSES to put on a blue uniform. Black people don’t choose to be black. big difference. also ‘the more brutality they face the more on edge they become’.......that’s scary as fuck. wow wow wow. so interesting that you stay silent about black lives but just HAVE to speak out about cops. you’ve made your views known before and here’s a great reminder that not much has changed.” Bekah’s comments struck a nerve with Garrett, and he uninvited Bekah from his home. He posted a screen shot of Bekah Martinez’s comment on his story followed by, “I you saying how much you loved me to Becca and you made a mistake for judging me in the past without knowing me…needless to say you never got to know me, still don’t know me, and you’re no longer invited over.”
The feud is understandable, coming on the heels of one of the biggest Black Lives Matter movement in history as well as public outrage from police brutality and the treatment of protestors. Garrett’s disregard to the situation further solidifies the issue of Bachelor stars using their platform to perpetuate ignorance rather than change. This comes after the controversy surrounding Hannah Brown’s use of the n-word on Instagram live, which caused similar backlash and a call for Hannah to take ownership of her mistakes. Although Garrett attempted to rectify his stance of Blue Lives Matter by stating he also posted in of Black Lives Matter previously, his response to Bekah Martinez’s shows how disconnected the 31-year-old is from the issue at hand.
Source: Garrett Yrigoyen