'Bachelor' alum Demi Burnett apologizes for wearing a Confederate flag jacket in resurfaced pic
Demi Burnett is apologizing. The 25-year-old Bachelor alum took to Twitter on Tuesday to speak out after a photo of her wearing a jacket with the Confederate flag resurfaced.
"F**k it. People are telling me I shouldn’t say anything, I'm going to say something about this," she began in the first of two videos. "So, there's been this picture that's been resurfaced of me wearing a jacket that had a Confederate flag on it. That jacket was given to me by my ex, his dad actually gave it to me, and I had no idea the weight that the Confederate flag held whenever I was wearing it."
"I just wore it for that one night, and it was a Yeezy jacket," she continued of Kanye West's brand. "I thought it was so cool. I was like, 'Yeah, Yeezy.' I didn’t even pay attention to that."
According to multiple outlets, in a 2013 radio interview West said of the jacket, "React how you want. Any energy is good energy. The Confederate flag represented slavery in a way. That’s my abstract take on what I know about it, right? So I wrote the song 'New Slaves.' So I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag. It’s my flag now."
Burnett continued by calling her choice to wear the jacket "ignorant."
"That's ignorance," she said. "That's ignorant of me not to pay attention to the Confederate flag. Even more ignorant of me to not even know how harmful that is to people."
She next admitted that she "royally f**ked up wearing that," adding that she's "so f**king sorry."
"I'm disgusted with myself. I'm embarrassed," she said. "It doesn’t even matter how I feel. I'm just so f**king sorry because that is not what I stand for, that is not what I’m about. I'm really mad that I ever wore it."
In her second video, Burnett said she's been "an ignorant, self-absorbed sack of s**t for most of my life."
"I genuinely had no idea what I was representing by wearing the jacket. I have no excuses, other than ignorant, self-absorbed sack of s**t," she said. "Disgusted with myself. I suck for that. I suck very badly for that. I know better now. Did not know better then."
She finished her posts by encouraging her followers to "be better than me."
"Don't look up to me. Look up to being better than me, 'cause I f**king suck and I really f**king hate myself for being ignorant," she said. "This is the time to change the world, make it better and I made it worse. So I'm really, really sorry."
— Demi Burnett (@demi_burnett) February 16, 2021
In response to Burnett's videos, one person tweeted, "Where's your apology for saying the n-word?" The same person shared a screenshot of an Instagram comment in which Burnett used the n-word. Burnett has yet to address the screenshot. ET has reached out to her for comment.
Burnett's apology comes after Bachelor host Chris Harrison announced he's stepping away from the franchise "for a period of time" after he defended current Bachelor contestant Rachael Kirkconnell from allegations of racism during an interview with former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay. Both Harrison and Kirkconnell have apologized.
Watch the video below for more on the controversy.
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