Bachelor star Matt James says he’s now “pursuing” a relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Rachael McConnell, after dumping her when her racist past resurfaced online.
“I’ve seen Rachael a handful of times,” he told PEOPLE. “I’m not pursuing any relationships right now outside of that. I said I was going to focus on my relationship with her and that means focusing on it.”
Racheal apologized in February for the photos of her at an antebellum-themed party in college in 2018. She said she would “continue to learn how to be antiracist.”
Matt dumped her after he called her when the pictures dropped online and she did not understand why he was upset.
MATT’S SEASON OF ‘THE BACHELOR’
“If you don’t understand that something like that is problematic in 2018, there’s a lot of me that you won’t understand,” he said during the After the Rose ceremony. “It’s as simple as that.”
He added, “When I questioned our relationship, it was on the contexts of you not fully understanding my Blackness and what it means to be a Black man in America and what it would mean for our kids when I saw those things that were floating around the internet. And it broke my heart because this is the last conversation I thought we’d be having. I didn’t sign up to have this conversation. And I knew that I had to take a step back for you to put in that work that you outlined that you needed to do and that’s something that you’ve got to do on your own and that’s why we can’t be in a relationship.”
