Big Brother Houseguest Drops N-Word During Live Feed — Fans Call for His Ouster
Not again, Big Brother.
In a conversation with Jared Fields, Cory Wurtenberger and Hisam Goueli Tuesday night, Luke Valentine, the white 30-year-old illustrator from Florida, surprisingly dropped the N-word. “We were in the cheese room, [N-word]!” he said. He quickly caught himself, put his hand to his mouth and said “I’m sorry.” (UPDATE: Valentine has officially been removed from the game.)
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View the NSFW conversation below.
After the word was uttered, Fields, a Black houseguest, discussed how the word sometimes made white people more uncomfortable than African Americans. “I don’t give a f–k,” he said. “Yeah, right, I should’ve made you feel uncomfortable real quick, like, ‘Whoa, bro, what you just say?'”
“I should’ve been lying face down on the floor with you standing over me or something,” Valentine responded. “Well, I’m in trouble now. I’ve been in worse trouble.”
TVLine has reached out to CBS for comment.
Riled up fans have taken to X (fka Twitter) to post their anger. Said user @whatsafastgame: “I really hate that these things are not properly addressed on Big Brother US. They never have and it seems like they never will be. Luke should be ejected from the game to teach him and others a lesson. Let’s hope the producers take corrective action.”
“Shame on the Big Brother production team if they let the Luke incident go by without a single word said to him,” posted @tvtalkswithtom. “Accountability is a MUST here.”
Big Brother has an unfortunate history with racism on the show. Not only have houseguests said racist things in the house, but Black houseguests often are the targets of microaggressions (as was the case with last season’s winner Taylor Hale) and early evictions. During Season 21, four of five non-white players were evicted within the first five weeks.
Season 15’s Aaryn Gries took heat for saying, “Go make some rice,” behind an Asian American houseguest’s back (among other unspeakable atrocities). On that same season, GinaMarie Zimmerman also made heaps of racist slurs. (“Candice [a Black houseguest] is already on the dark side, because she’s already dark.”) Gries lost a modeling contract, while Zimmerman lost a job as a pageant coordinator.
As a response to the show’s history, an all-Black alliance called the Cookout formed in Season 23. They stuck together until the very end, after which they crowned the show’s first-ever Black winner, Xavier Prather. The very next year, Kyle Capener, paranoid that the BIPOC contestants would again unite, suggested forming his own alliance to counteract that.
Should Big Brother eject Luke for his racial slur? Sound off below.
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