Hannah Brown Issues Lengthy Apology For Singing The N-Word

Two weeks after Hannah Brown sang the n-word in an Instagram Live, the former Bachelorette has issued a second, lengthy apology amid nationwide unrest at the killing of George Floyd. Early in May, Hannah was singing along to "Rockstar" by DaBaby on Instagram Live when fans pointed out that she had sung the n-word. She playfully apologized while Live, then more sincerely in a brief statement on her Instagram Story. However, after fellow former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay called out Hannah's unwillingness to address what happened in the video, and as protests began forming in the United States following the death of George Floyd during an encounter with the Minneapolis police, Hannah sat down in front of the camera over the weekend for an 18-minute apology and discussion of how she plans to grow from this.

Hannah says her hesitation to speak up fully about the incident was to not take up space from the Black voices that were speaking out.

"The death of George Floyd is happening and there's so much suffering and anger," she said in the video. "I didn't want to offend anybody and I may be offending people right now but I realized it's not about the right time, it's about the right thing."

First, she explained her behavior during the initial Instagram Live, when she at one point denied even having said the word. She said that since she always omitted the word when singing songs before, she couldn't believe she had actually said it, and while being intoxicated as well as "embarrassed and confused," she ended up saying all the wrong things in trying to defend herself.

It wasn't until the next morning that the full gravity of the situation hit her, and she said it was never her intention to post a simple apology and hope it all went away.

"What I did was something extremely serious and I did not want to continue repeating this long history of white people not taking accountability and responsibility for their actions when Black people – people of color – call them out on their behavior," she told her audience.

She said she realizes that for her to have been capable of letting the word slip must mean that she had allowed something "into her heart" for it to happen. In the past two weeks she has hired an educator to ask her to the hard questions and help her learn from this experience, and she's only just begun to "scratch the surface." She also called on her fans to not defend what she did.

"I will be a part of the solution, and you will see that," she concluded the video. "From the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry. I’m sorry to everyone I hurt and disappointed. I promise to continue doing better, I promise."

Watch Hannah's full apology below.