Thread by @lisasharper

#TheBachelorFinale was riveting. @EmmanuelAcho killed it. He guided #BatchelorNation through a straightforward, honest, whiteness-decentered, brave conversation on Black maleness in US. #MattJames @mattjames919 was clear. He and his future children need a woman who gets it. 1/

It makes sense that the first time #TheBachelor is a Black man the season ends with a painful conversation about race. The political construct of #race in the US was built in 1662 to answer the question of interracial children and marriage in VA and MD, respectively. 2/

In VA House of Burgess wanted to solve the riddle: What is status of mixed race children (products of white masters raping enslaved women).

MD Legislature wanted to stop flood of white immigrant women from falling in love and marrying enslaved African men...

#TheBachelorABC 3/

Both colonies solved their conundrums by prohibiting interracial marriage + enslaving mixed race children in perpetuity.

Race-based slavery BEGAN in response to interracial sexual politics. Those 1662/64 laws were not overturned until Loving v. Virginia (1967).

#TheBachelor 4/

Plus, more than 4000 lynchings were recorded in US after Civil War/Reconstruction (1877-1950); vast majority catalyzed by accusations against Black men that they raped, winked at, looked at a white woman. Think #EmmettTill

#TheBachelorABC #TheBachelorFinale
#TheBachelor 5/

#TheBachelorABC has been running since 2002. It took 25 seasons to feature a Black man for a reason; because interracial sexual politics is the blood that courses through the beating heart of white patriarchy in the US.

#TheBachelorFinale #TheBachelor 6/

#BatchelorNation thought it was just watching a tv show with a more tanned #batchelor. They were not. They were watching a season-long direct confrontation with the construct of race and multiple revelations of its impacts on Black men.

#TheBachelorABC #TheBachelorFinale 7/

I commend .@mattjames919. Matt conducted himself in a manner and with the clarity worthy of the place he will hold in history. Even the haze of his final two days, we can now see was wisdom rising up and warning him to slow down.

#TheBachelorFinale #TheBachelorABC 8/

I celebrate #TheBachelorABC humanization of facets of Black manhood simply by Introducing us to @mattjames919 family; his soft-hearted, hard-shelled, sharp, surviving brother and his absent father whose father was stolen from him by African colonization.

#TheBachelorABC 9/

#RachelKirkconnell, Beloved, #MattJames inability to reunite on path to marriage is not cancellation. It is #reckoning w/ truth that you are simply not prepared to be wife of a Black man/mother of his children in 2021. Let your love move you to learn.

#TheBachelorFinale 10/10