Its no secret that The Bachelor franchise, the gold standard for reality dating TV shows, has a big race problem. The Bachelor, which has aired on ABC since 2002, along with popular spin-off shows, The Bachelorette and Bachelor In Paradise, is best known for a vision of overwhelmingly white, heteropatriarchal marital love that it sells to its cast and its millions of viewers.

The franchises viewers and cast members skew white . In 2012, the shows diversity issues came to a head when a group of Black men filed a class action lawsuit against The Bachelor, claiming that the franchises casting practices violated civil rights law that plainly prohibits whites from refusing to contract with African Americans because of their race. (The suit was ultimately dismissed on the basis of the First Amendment.) Even so, The Bachelor waited another five years 15 years since its start to cast its first Black Bachelorette . Three years later, after nationwide protests against racism and police brutality erupted this summer, they finally announced the casting of a Black Bachelor, Matt James . His season is currently filming.

For most of the shows history, its production team and network remained largely silent on the issue, offering bland excuses for the ongoing failure of the show to cast more diversely when pressed in interviews. But in the midst of a summer of racial reckoning, which prompted members of Bachelor Nation fans and former cast members alike to put together an entire social media campaign to push the franchise to make concrete commitments on diversity and inclusion, the production team was finally forced to put out a statement in June . They admitted their responsibility for the lack of representation of people of color on our franchise, and pledged to make significant changes by taking positive steps to expand diversity in our cast, in our staff, and most importantly, in the relationships that we show on television. Just two weeks ago, the official Bachelor Nation Instagram account announced it would be banning racist, bullying, abusive comments about cast members.

As Bachelor Nation pushed for more racial diversity and equity on screen and COVID-19 prevented the filming of its usual summer shows, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, the franchise aired a throwback recap series called The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons Ever! The move inadvertently served as a reminder of the homogeneity of many past seasons, and the uncomfortable environment faced by Black contestants and other contestants of color.

Amid all this, we wanted to hear from former cast members of color. They saw the shows race issues firsthand and have been among the most vocal voices pushing for change from within. For HuffPosts Bachelor podcast, Here to Make Friends, we interviewed 12 former cast members who appeared on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette between 2002 and 2017 about their experiences with the franchise and what role race played.

CASTING

Racial diversity in casting has varied over the years. LaNease Adams, a Black woman, was one of the final six contestants in the shows inaugural, six-episode season starring Alex Michel. In the ensuing years, some seasons featured all-white casts, and contestants of color rarely made it past the early episodes. The 2012 class action lawsuit spearheaded by two Black men against ABC and Warner Horizon TV was ultimately dismissed, but it did move the needle on the public dialogue surrounding the franchises whiteness. In the next season produced after the lawsuit, season 17 starring Sean Lowe, there was a notable increase in BIPOC contestants, including Robyn Howard Jedkins and Leslie Hughes.

LaNease Adams, season 1 of The Bachelor: I got a phone call [from a casting agent] saying, Hey, LaNease we think you would be great for this new show, go down there and do an interview. So I went down there, I interviewed with casting and it all went so fast. I think within three weeks I was taping.