While she now has close to two million followers after her lauded time as the Bachelorette, Tayshia Adams noticed the undeniable disparity between the follower count for white and BIPOC’s contestants when she was competing for Colton Underwood‘s heart in 2019.
Despite making it to the final three, “I was easily one of the girls with the least amount of followings compared to the girls that were in week five or six,” Adams told E! News in a recent interview. “I had much more airtime, my family was involved, I had little one-on-ones and dates, we actually had a connection and other girls had quote-unquote followers. I definitely experienced that.”
And it’s not just the female contestants of color who’ve seen that divide.
Just look at Adams’ final four men: While white finalists Zach Clark, Ben Smith and Brendan Morais all have over 300,000 followers, Ivan Hall, who is Black, has 162,000.