In a move that seems not-so-coincidentally timed with the 2024 election season, Nick and Vanessa Lachey brought the messiest love experiment on TV to Washington D.C. As an avid viewer of cursed dating content, I had already parasocially experienced love in the nation’s capital through Married at First Sight’s iconic and demonic 10th season. Still, I didn’t anticipate that Love Is Blind season 7 would run head-first toward the red white, and blue elephant in the room.
Love is Blind has been notorious for its expert tap dancing around race, religion, and politics in the previous six seasons, in efforts to create matches made in heaven (if heaven is a blank vacuum, like something straight out of Bruce Almighty). Because real life is not a white void, fans have long suspected that production has been puppeteering these moments out of the final edit. Well, this year, Mr. Netflix tore down that sociopolitical wall! Identity, ethnicity, and “who I voted for in 2016” are hot topics among many couples. Naturally, throwing race into the Love Is Blind equation unleashed a pandora’s box of chaos not only for the LIB lovebirds to deal with but that their audience has been left to reckon with, too.
Taylor And Garrett
By the first episode of season 7, Garrett (31) and Taylor (29) are already “blown away” by their “magnetic connection.” After making it clear they’re on the fast track to end game, Garrett asks Taylor about her parents. Taylor expresses how she’s excited to see her dad become a grandparent and how her mom is an “angel and a gangster” that everyone calls by her cool first name. Naturally, Garrett is curious about what that name is, but Taylor won’t say. Her “mom’s first name gives away part of how [she looks]. Like, [her] ethnicity.” Ethnicity hasn’t even crossed Garrett’s mind, because he’s always dated white girls.
The more his train of thought gains speed out loud, the more the “shock” of potentially proposing to someone he’s never seen before shakes him up. The thing is, what exactly did Garrett expect going on a show with “blind” in the title?
His clumsy realization he might fall in love with someone who doesn’t look like him is pretty much all the evidence needed to prove that white is still the default for most, even on reality TV. Garrett thinks Taylor’s “calculated” choice to remain “carefully curated” in his mind is equally admirable and terrifying. Even though she signed up to find a soulmate who loves her for her personality and “everything else will be extra,” Garrett’s wishy-washy reaction almost makes her change her mind.
Tim and Alex: What is The Nation of Islam?
It’s easy to praise Taylor for honoring the experiment (and criticize Garrett for coming off as closed-minded) but the reality is race isn’t just a visual thing. Alex Bird (33) and Tim (33) discuss two specific experiences as Black individuals during a pod date featured in episode 2. Tim is happy he joined the Navy but describes his exit as “the second best decision” he ever made. His praise of a complex organization prompts Alex to proudly share her grandfather was the National Secretary of The Nation of Islam who worked closely with their problematic prophet, Elijah Muhammad.
For those unfamiliar, The Nation is a controversial Black nationalist religious group that civil rights leader Malcolm X once belonged to before he was later assassinated by two of its members. Somehow the LIB editors found a quaint button about all religions’ “common themes about love” to wrap up this portion of their chat. While I wasn’t quite ready to breeze past those hefty revelations, Alex and Tim seemed satisfied with how their values re: the politicization of religion aligned. It feels unlikely that a non-Black man could’ve had that same reaction to Alex’s family history — if he even knew what she was talking about.
Marissa, Bohdan, And Ramses
Marissa (32) and Bohdan (36), like Tim, are former military, which inherently makes their conversations about their lives politically charged. Marissa (who presents more like a Saved by the Bell character than a Navy sailor) smiled through every second of Bohdan’s “party story” about beefing with a camel in the desert. That’s not to say Marissa’s personal politics follow Pentagon protocol 101. She dates people for “who they are” as long as they’re “pretty smart.” This includes a long-term relationship with a “conservative Trump supporter” and a “progressive liberal guy.” She also bonds with her other crush, Ramses (35), about how toxic masculinity is so two thousand and late, which is a big part of the reason their relationship goes further.
Monica and Stephen: Why is it offensive to call someone a “mutt”?
But as some of us have learned the hard way, toxicity isn’t always overt. During a date in episode 2, Monica (37) delicately asks Stephen (34) who he voted for in 2016. And yes, it was Donald Trump. Turns out he wasn’t happy with that hot mess of a presidency, so he voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Stephen finds it “mind-blowing” that Republicans such as his father or devout Democrats aren’t “willing to change their mind” when it comes to the voting booth. While it’s exhausting AF to hear another uneducated (his words!) centrist try to outsmart the US two-party system, that’s not even the tea here. Stephen goes on to explain that though he had always been told he was Italian, Ancestry results revealed his dad was ” three-fifths Black.” He’s now “fascinated” by his West African roots because he used to “[identify] as white his whole life.” While I wish I could hold Stephen’s hand as I break the news he should, in fact, continue to identify as white, that’s STILL not the real tea!!!
When Monica goes into her ethnic background (her mom is of biracial Honduran origin and her dad is Black and Cherokee) Stephen quips, “So you really are a mutt girl!” Monica chirps back, “I’m a fucking mutt.” It’s obvious from the way Stephen delivers this zinger that he wasn’t aiming to be hateful. But relating someone’s multiracial heritage to that of an animal (or food) has a violent history in America and abroad for people of all non-white races. Hearing Stephen so casually use such derogatory language to speak about a Black woman out of pure ignorance was jarring enough. Watching Monica fail to clock his massive mistake was stunning.
So, Stephen and Monica are probably not the new Love is Blind interracial golden couple poised to overthrow Lauren and Cameron. Their clunky dancing around his being “barely that Black” serves as the show’s unintentional lesson in how educating a white partner can be too big of a job for one woman. If Stephen’s questionable but well-meaning POV is sticky enough, it seems impossible Marissa managed a three-year-long romance with a Trump supporter given her opinions about the patriarchy. More than that, she’s a Black woman, whose safety in Trump-loving circles is far from guaranteed.
Marissa From Love Is Blind’s “Trump Supporter” Ex-Boyfriend
In her final date with Bohdan in episode 4, she shares her ex was a “good person and everything” but they had a “difference in thinking about how society works.” My humble question is, girl, how TF does that work? She was “so happy” Bohdan was on board with basic protections for the working class and refused to vote for “a rapist” “who tried to overthrow the government,” even if that made some people categorize him as a “liberal pussy.” So how could she (or anyone) stomach intimacy with a partner who thinks of her national disgrace as a hometown hero? Their candid conversation is Love Is Blind’s best argument for laying out these non-negotiables from behind the other side of the wall.
But if the audience is supposed to accept that single-background partnerships are automatically romcom material, then Alex and Tim missed the memo. Even though it was easier for Tim to connect early on with his “D.C. melanated version” of Miranda Priestly (that was supposed to be a compliment, I think), they’re the first couple to crack in Mexico. Did eliminating a race conflict make things easier? Likely, so. But it didn’t stop them from making me want to crawl under the covers as they discussed their explosive off-camera fight. Maybe Tyler’s (34) and Ashley’s (32) constant prayer will lock them in for life, but you’d have a hard time convincing me there’s actually a romantic spark there.
Love Is Blind is a Netflix reality show, not a session of Congress on C-Span. It’s obvious why the show isn’t designed to bring us the nuanced discussions of these life-altering issues we’d probably need to learn something. And, even though these couples are far from role models, they are representative of pillow talk happening all across America at this very moment. Interracial, interfaith, and maybe even interpolitical couples are happily ever after-ing every single day without The Lachey’s help. So why is it so rare that couples of different backgrounds make their way out of the pods and down the aisle?
Netflix needs to elevate its casting beyond finding people who are willing to yap about their beliefs if it wants to make more love connections that successfully cross societal borders. The longest-lasting connections on this show, like Lauren and Cameron, Brett and Tiffany, and Alexa and Brennon, shared the most crucial human trait in common: a deep understanding of who they are and even better how to articulately express it to a stranger. To create more love and less mess, Nick and Vanessa would have to find contestants who have not only done the work to unpack their own history but are curious enough about the world that they’re educated in other people’s, different from their own. But that wouldn’t be as fun as watching cringe-worthy screaming matches in hotel rooms, would it?
