Love Island USA removed Cierra Ortega from the villa after posts containing racial slurs resurfaced online.
On Sunday night’s episode of Love Island, some viewers may have been surprised to hear announcer Iain Stirling begin the episode with a statement saying that islander Cierra Ortega had left the villa due to personal reasons before the episode quickly moved on as if nothing had happened. If one has been paying attention to the online chatter surrounding Cierra, however, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear about her sudden departure from the villa at all.
Last week, the internet was abuzz with screenshots of a social media post by Cierra in which she used an Asian slur, prompting fans to call for her immediate removal. Fans also discovered an additional Instagram post that showed her using the same slur while referring to her eyes, but that post appears to have since been deleted. Calls from fans demanding her removal from the villa soon followed, and The Daily Mail cited that Cierra Ortega lost over 200,000 followers within 48 hours of the posts gaining public attention. While Cierra remained in the house on Friday night’s episode, Sunday’s episode found viewers met with her abrupt departure without addressing what had led to her sudden exit from the house.
While producers clearly listened to fans and rightfully removed Ortega and did not try to salvage her coupling this late in the game, not addressing the cause and chalking it up to “personal reasons” is a cop-out, as this isn’t the first instance this season where a Latina has been removed from the Fiji villa for using slurs.
Yulissa Escobar lasted all of two episodes before her departure from the series due to online backlash she received for using racial slurs in prior podcast appearances.
Following her departure from Love Island, Yulissa issued a public apology on her Instagram page, saying, “First, I want to apologize for using a word I had no right to use. Podcast clips from years ago have recently resurfaced, and I want to address it directly. In those clips, I used a word I never should’ve used, a racial slur. I used it ignorantly, not fully understanding the weight, history, or pain behind it. I wasn’t trying to be offensive or harmful, but I recognize now that intention doesn’t excuse impact. And the impact of that word is real. It’s tied to generations of trauma, and it is not mine to use.”
These two clear-cut instances of islanders using racial slurs on their public social media pages and in public appearances raise numerous questions. For starters, what kind of vetting process does production do if they do not catch these posts and public interviews with potential islanders during the casting process? Do they simply look at the influencer’s tally of followers and not the content of their pages nor their podcast interviews and digital footprint as a whole? Or worse, do they vet these people and do deep dives and discover these racist transgressions and simply not care until contestants find themselves called out by the public at large?
We have seen how fan bases are able to conduct research at levels worthy of a national intelligence bureau. However, coming across these instances didn’t require that deep of a dive. The power of stan culture has reached an all-time high in this digital age, but one could argue that it shouldn’t take a massive wave of fan outrage for production to act because this all could have been flagged during the casting process.
In Yulissa Escobar’s case, she has publicly outlined her ouster from the show and stated that production told her it was in reference to social media posts and took public accountability for her actions. Whether Cierra will say the same upon return from the island remains to be seen as she is still currently away and unable to communicate publicly.
For their part, Ortega’s parents have since released a statement to her Instagram stories saying, “We’re not here to justify or ignore what’s surfaced. We understand why people are upset, and we know accountability matters. But what’s happening online right now has gone far beyond that.”
Ortega’s parents then went on to address the hate Cierra and her family and friends have received online in response to the discovery of the posts and asked for compassion and patience while Cierra remains away and unable to address the matter for herself.
Two instances of Latinas on Love Island being removed for racial slurs also highlight another issue, that of casual racism within the Latine community, but that is a much lengthier conversation that needs to take place beyond the context of a singular season of Love Island.
What is clear for now is that these two instances are indicative of a much larger problem, and one can only hope that production amends its vetting process to ensure that no one with such a public history of using racial slurs makes it onto the cast again. It shouldn’t be the onus of the public to hold contestants accountable for their racism. Production should ensure that they are not platformed on national television to begin with. Especially when the cast itself is so diverse. They deserve to be protected from potential instances of racism and microaggressions.
We watch the show for the islanders and bombshells, not for bombshell racial scandals from the islanders. The show needs to do better, these contestants need to do better, as does our community as a whole.
